Betty Smith's Lessons On Gratitude - A Tree Grows In Brooklyn

As a young man, not too long after struggling to get my first job, I read Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (long before I read Marcus Aurelius's Meditations). Betty's Smith's humility and lines of gratitude in the preface of the book touched my heart and given my short experience that time in the real world, I was able to connect to her words in a literal sense (and I still do). Those lines still bring tears to my eyes.

There is a very thin line between being narcissistic and individualist. Just because the English language has a clear distinction between those two words doesn't mean people reflect on it and practice that difference.

There are so many little things I am grateful for; what I am today is the sum of all those myriad of little things. So many little things a lot of people did overtime for Max is what helped him not only have more time but have a quality time where he was even able to play frisbee while going through multiple cycles of radiation therapy, gallons of chemo pumped into him on a bi-weekly basis and innumerable chemical compounds in the form of pills multiple times a day.

These thoughts aren't hindsight gratitude. I was aware as and when these events unfolded, the gratitude I owe these people as well as to my random luck. It's so easy to bullshit myself with virtue signaling and delude myself that these qualities are miraculously "innate".

Robert Sapolsky in his book Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst paraphrases neurobiologist Donald Hebb which summarizes this (amongst many other things) beautifully...

It is not meaningful to ask what a gene does, just what it does in a particular environment (is what is important). 

It is no more appropriate to say things like characteristic A is more influenced by nature that nurture than... to say that the area of a rectangle is more influenced by its length than its width.

Once again Sapolsky beautifully summarizes his entire book in a single paragraph:

If you had to boil this book down to a single phrase, it would be “it’s complicated.” Nothing seems to cause anything; instead, everything just modulates into something else. Scientists keep saying, “We used to think X, but we realize that ...” Fixing one thing often messes up ten more, as the law of unintended consequences reigns. On any big, important issue it seems like 51 percent of scientific studies conclude one thing, and 49 percent concludes the opposite. And so on. Eventually, it can seem hopeless that you can fix something, can make things better. 

But we have no choice but to try. And if you are reading this, you are probably ideally suited to do so. You’ve amply proven you have intellectual tenacity. You probably also have running water, a home, adequate calories, and low odds of festering with a bad parasite disease. You probably don’t have to worry about the Ebola virus, warlords, or being invisible in your world. And you’ve been educated. In other words, you’re one of the lucky humans. So try. 

My good moral "areas" were influenced by so many little things and those little things still help me to try. So I tried and will keep trying to adhere to my responsibilities as a human being. It is as simple as that.

Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.

- Marcus Aurelius 

My first lesson on gratitude as far as I can remember which bought me tears - Betty Smiths words of as a struggling writer trying to find a job from the preface of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was one of those little-big things:

My book wasn't dedicated to anyone because I couldn't decide which person was most helpful to me in the writing of it. I thought of the mother who gave me life. I owe a lot to her and to my sister and brother who made my childhood a magical time. I am grateful to my children whose baby years made a life of pleasant contentment for me. There is something owing to a beloved friend and to an understanding husband; there is a debt to a loved teacher. The grocer who gave me affectionate credit during the lean writing years cannot be forgotten, nor the veterinarian who set my dog's broken leg and brushed aside my promise to "pay sometime," with a gallant, "Oh,  forget it!" 

I am indebted to chance acquaintances on trains and in bus stations for exchanged confidences about the everlasting verities of life. I am deeply obligated to a person who caused me much anguish because the grief made me grow up emotionally and gave me a little more understanding. I am tenderly grateful to an employer of long ago who on a hot August afternoon told me that the job I was applying for had been filled but who urged me to sit down and rest a minute before I went on to answer the next ad. He brought me a paper cup of iced water. My cup flowed over, literally, when I added a couple of tired tears to the water. 

All of these people hundreds more, in fact, everyone who touched my life for good or bad helped in the writing of my book. I could not dedicate it to one without being disloyal to the others. 

But I do want to dedicate this special edition-the edition gotten out solely because so many people were kind about The Tree. I want to dedicate it to you. I want to dedicate it to all of you who've read it and to you who are reading it now. And I want to say: "Thanks! Thanks a whole lot."