All in the attitude

Written by Joe Pisani
Wednesday, 16 September 2009 23:00

Every afternoon when I pass through the cavernous corridors of Grand Central, I come upon a middle-aged man in a wheelchair pushed up against the wall, his New York Post across his lap as he stares at the pedestrian traffic passing by.

For a second or two, I glance at him before hurrying to the book store or the pen shop or the newsstand or any of the other diversions I’ve built into my day to make the life of an inveterate commuter more bearable.

But last week I paused during a particularly trying day when I was feeling more than my fair share of self-pity, and the thought flit through my mind, “Poor guy. What would I do with his problems? Mine are comparatively small.”

We all have those moments — those epiphanies when we realize how blessed we are — and they give us a good dose of what my father used to call “the attitude of gratitude.” Even when I have occasions to be justifiably dejected, I’ve discovered that looking for reasons to be grateful uplifts me and puts the trials of life in perspective.

Most of the time, though, I find myself asking, “What’s there to be grateful about?” Just look at the headlines — wars, high unemployment, rising taxes, political wrangling, anger on talk radio and in the blogosphere, not to mention problems with our families and friends. The list of excuses to be ungrateful can get pretty long.

One relative I loved dearly would often look out the window on a resplendent August afternoon at the pure blue sky and sigh, “Winter’s coming.” When winter finally came four months later, she’d sigh: “This is the worst winter I’ve ever seen.” It’s in the attitude.

We all know chronic complainers; the sad irony is that people who have the most are often the loudest whiners because of some perverse principle of human nature that psychiatry hasn’t deciphered yet.

A negative attitude, I’m convinced, is learned behavior. In the same way, gratitude has to be learned because without it, life is a dismal succession of catastrophes, real and imagined.

Another person I knew, who lived a life of interminable dissatisfaction, was always praying for things, petitioning the man upstairs with a new demand every day:

“Let me win Lotto.”

“Let me find the perfect wife on the Internet.”

“Let me get that promotion.”

“Let me get a good deal on a condo in Greenwich.”

Sad to say, he uttered every prayer except, “Hey, thanks for the good things you sent my way.”

After my third daughter went to Calcutta, India, to work with Mother Teresa’s nuns, she came back and told us about families of homeless people living on the sidewalks in cardboard boxes who were incomprehensibly always smiling. To my thinking, they had absolutely nothing to be thankful for.

But gratitude can be a strange thing. In the places were you’d expect to find it you don’t, but then it manifests itself in the least likely places, and you realize — it’s all in the attitude.

Joe Pisani has been a writer and editor for 30 years. Questions or comments, e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .