From our earliest years, we are taught to say thank you. Our holy Torah is filled with examples and stories of how one must show gratitude in every aspect of our lives.
First we learn with the morning prayer of Modeh Ani to give thanks and appreciation to the Almighty, who gave and gives us life, and everything that we possess.
There are so many people in our lives, starting with our parents, to whom we owe our heartfelt thanks. But the list doesn’t end there. We have to show appreciation to our siblings and our relatives, our teachers and our friends. If you stop and think of all the things that were done for you over the years, the list would probably be very long.
We are even taught in our holy Torah that we must have gratitude for the Egyptians who enslaved us for 210 years, in horrible conditions, since they gave us bread and water and a place to stay. This sounds outrageous! To enemies who tortured us and made our lives miserable we have to be grateful? This just goes to show how important Hakarat Hatov is to G-d and to His children, His emulators.
A few days ago I came back from a wonderful trip to America, the place where I was born and lived for a good part of my adolescent years. I had not been back for almost 20 years.
All of us go through challenges in our lives. One can just let one’s imagination run wild wondering how many tests and challenges a person might experience in the course of 20 years. Sometimes when we go through very hard times, as a survival tactic to endure the great pain we might have suffered, our minds erase blocks of time in order to go on despite the hard events we might have gone through. The brain does not necessarily distinguish between the good things and bad things we went through. The mind can take whole sections of time and just paint the whole picture black. Then, if we want to forget that time period, we just erase, so to speak, a whole section in time as opposed to a specific incident or event. The pain might be too great to start sifting through what was bad and what was really good; to make it easier to move on, we simply wipe it all out.
I have mentioned in the past my handicapped son who was born healthy and at the age of three suffered a terrible head injury leaving him disabled till this very day. This event was very traumatic for me, and subconsciously I must have erased many chapters of my good and special past. Traveling back to my home in Brooklyn, New York, and spending time with my family there, brought back many wonderful memories and feelings that I had long forgotten. I felt like I was in high school again, but with a much greater appreciation for everything around me; my old neighborhood, the pretty homes, the seashore and the bay that I lived so close to. The wonderful family I spent so much time with all those years ago. My friends and teachers, my old school and synagogue I used to go to. The laughs and the tears and all the bonding of those beautiful years. I had buried it all with my great pain and suffering and didn’t remember any of the good that had happened during those years. I am so glad that G-d granted me the opportunity to go back and remember all the good times I had growing up, with such a warm supportive and loving family.
Sometimes in life when we make it big, we tend to think that we made it on our own and forget where we came from, and thanks to whom we made it so far. As kids we know our parents and family are everything, and we have nothing else but them. However, when we grow older, we start thinking we achieved our fame and fortune in life all alone and tend to forget all those loving and supportive years growing up, without which we couldn’t have become who we are today.
We must remember that we are made up of who we are and whom we came from. We must have this gratitude, Hakarat Hatov, in order to really be successful in life. Alone, no one can succeed. It is when we give thanks and unite with those who brought us into this world and gave us everything possible that we can truly succeed and reach the sky.
Thank you, Hashem, for my wonderful family.