Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

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Category: gratitude

#BlogElul Day 2: Blessings are expressions of gratitude

August 27, 2014 /


One of my favorite parts of any Jewish worship service is the section sometimes labeled ‘Nisim she’b’chol Yom’ – everyday miracles. We are presented with a series of 1-line sentences that all begin by blessing God as we take a moment to contemplate every little moment that has already passed since the moment we became aware that we were awake that morning, right up to the present. Blessings for the ability to stretch, to open our eyes, to place our feet on the ground, for the clothes we are wearing, and so on.  I often introduce this section of the liturgy at a Bar or Bat mitzvah service because I think its something that everyone in the room can relate to and appreciate. Sometimes I see nods of recognition and see a spark as some in the room realize the power in our fixed liturgy to make us more mindful and appreciative of the ordinary – the things that we take for granted until we no longer have them.  Sometimes I feel some sadness as I watch rows of young teens who are unfamiliar with communal prayer, looking uncomfortable and self-conscious, unable to accept the invitation to verbalize out loud an appreciation for something as simple as waking up.  They will often smile in recognition when I admit that there are many mornings when my first thought, rather than being an expression of blessing, is more like ‘Urgghh… do I have to get up?!’ But that’s when I realize that the power of a repetitive ritual that calls on me to recognize ordinary blessings out loud is the power to shift my whole orientation to the day ahead.  Now that is miraculous!

In our new High Holy Day machzor, Mishkan haNefesh, we are offered the traditional blessings – a list that we can find in the Babylonian Talmud, indicating that they are over 1500 years old. We are also offered other, relatively more recent texts, that express the same sentiment. On Rosh Hashanah morning, one of these options is ‘Miracles’ by Walt Whitman. In this poem, Whitman invites us to experience the everyday through the lens of wonder and amazement:

Why! Who makes mach of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles.
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love –
or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at the table at dinner with my mother,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of an August forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds – or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down – or of stars shining so quiet and bring,
Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new-moon in May…
These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles…
To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every inch of space is a miracle…
Every spear of grass – the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women,
and all that concerns them,
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.

These blessings are not prayers that ask anything of God. They are simply expressions of Gratitude. A way of growing this character trait of beauty within each one of us. If we want to approach the New Year with an intention to change and repair, this simple practice of morning affirmations can be quite transformative if we choose to make them into a regular habit.

A Thankful Heart Changes Everything

November 22, 2012 /

Last night I delivered the sermon at our Westborough Interfaith Thanksgiving Service.  It was a charming evening that brought many from the town together.  This was the 40th year that the town has held this service.

A prayer of gratitude… attributed to Homer.  No, not that Homer – Homer Simpson.  It goes like this: 
Dear Lord: The gods have been good to me. For the first time in my life, everything is absolutely perfect just the way it is. So here’s the deal: You freeze everything the way it is, and I won’t ask for anything more. If that is OK, please give me absolutely no sign. OK, deal. In gratitude, I present you this offering of cookies and milk. If you want me to eat them for you, give me no sign. Thy will be done.” (Homer Simpson, as written by  Dan Castellaneta).
Of course, despite being quite funny, the requisite response to Homer’s words, is ‘Doh!’  The only thing in this world that stays the same is change. So if we can only express gratitude when we are coasting on the peak experiences of life, we are likely to feel quite ungrateful for substantial periods of time.
But can we really muster up an attitude of gratitude when life isn’t plain sailing?  How can we get there, and why does it make a difference?
Now, I’ve only been in town since July but in the 5 short months that I’ve been at B’nai Shalom, my congregants have already learned that I’m not so much of a morning person.  I tend to burn the candle at the other end of the day. But it takes me a couple of hours each morning to get up to full speed.  When the alarm goes off at the quite respectable time of 7am, I’m more inclined to turn it off with a groan.  But the Jewish tradition invites us to utter a sentence in prayer each and every morning, the moment we are aware of gaining consciousness again.  That prayer begins, Modah Ani Lefanecha… thankful am I before You.  Thankful am I before you! Not, ‘urgghh, do I have to get up already?’  Thankful am I before you.  And even though I may not literally recite the blessing, my awareness of its message helps refocus me on the days that I am reluctant to get going.
The prayer functions as a mantra for daily mindfulness.  We find that many faith traditions have similar ways of placing an attitude of gratitude into our hearts and minds.  And what they all particularly have in common is their attachment to the ordinary, every day events of our lives. 
It is not at the peak moments of life that our spiritual traditions ask us to bring gratitude to mind.  While we may well take those moments for granted when we should not, it is not those moments that faith and spiritual practice provide support and help with.  Rather it is the moments that are so mundane that we take them for granted almost every single day.  And so Jews have a blessing for waking up.  Christians and Jews utter brief words of gratitude before eating a meal. 
Buddhist and Vepassana meditation begins by bringing attention to the simple act of breathing in and out, bringing to mind an echo at the end of Psalm 150, ‘Let each and every breath be a praise to God.’  During the five daily prayers in Islamic practice, a Muslim may utter words from the Qu’ran: Worship Allah, and be of those who give thanks. (Quran 39:66)
But while it is quite clear that every spiritual tradition prods and pokes us into mindful awareness of all the simple and quite ordinary things in life we could be grateful for – and that’s before we come to the Jewish Bathroom prayer – yes, we really do have a daily prayer of gratitude that is traditionally recited to give thanks that all the plumbing down there is working just fine – what changes when we adopt these spiritual practices and let them guide our daily consciousness?
A grateful heart does, quite literally, change everything.  Even in the midst of the most challenging periods in our lives, if we can bring awareness to the briefest moment of blessing, it can provide a spark of hope and light in dark times. I’m struck when I visit families after the death of a loved one that, even in the midst of the sorrow of loss, the ability to tell stories and share sweet memories can bring back smiles; sometimes even laughter.  While the pain of loss can be enormous, somehow it can coexist with these moments.  And the truth is, the pain only exists because of our capacity to love.  It is the blessing of the multitude of moments we shared that makes the loss so acute.  But we would not choose to give up one of those precious memories to avoid the pain of loss.

In recent weeks, as many of us have directed resources to help those most affected by Hurricane Sandy, in the midst of the loss and the extreme discomfort, we have all heard heart-warming stories about the moment a volunteer reaches the 25th floor of an apartment building in the Rockaways by foot to be greeted by an ever-so-grateful elderly resident as they hand over blankets and food. The places of worship that have opened their doors to provide shelter and hot meals to so many who are grateful that they have not been forgotten.  Each moment, a spark of light offering hope in the midst of darkness.

I’ll end with a story from the Hassidic Jewish world of the 1700s:

Some students of the Maggid of Mezheritz came to him. “Rebbe, we are puzzled. It says in the Talmud that we must thank God as much for the bad days, as for the good. How can that be? What would our gratitude mean, if we gave it equally for the good and the bad?” The Maggid replied, “Go to Anapol. Reb Zusya will have an answer for you.”

The Hasidim undertook the journey. Arriving in Anapol, they inquired for Reb Zusya. At last, they came to the poorest street of the city. There, crowded between two small houses, they found a tiny shack, sagging with age.

When they entered, they saw Reb Zusya sitting at a bare table, reading a volume by the light of the only small window. “Welcome, strangers!” he said. “Please pardon me for not getting up; I have hurt my leg. Would you like food? I have some bread. And there is water!”

“No. We have come only to ask you a question. The Maggid of Mezheritz told us you might help us understand: Why do our sages tell us to thank God as much for the bad days as for the good?”

Reb Zusya laughed. “Me? I have no idea why the Maggid sent you to me.” He shook his head in puzzlement. “You see, I have never had a bad day. Every day God has given to me has been filled with miracles.”

Imagine the power of such a positive orientation to living each and every day, whatever it brought with it. Ask yourself, how would Reb Zusya’s life, or even his state of mind, benefit from bringing his attention to things that he might have wanted and he lacked? What is the impact of his answer on his visitors? They may be amazed, but they are also inspired. If such a man, living such a simple and encumbered life, is able to taste the sweetness of each day, oriented to life with an attitude of gratitude, recognizing the daily miracles that continue to exist even in the midst of hardship… would not such a man inspire them toward a positive orientation to all that they are blessed with in life?

May we be so inspired and may our hearts, filled with gratitude, guide our hands and our communities to act so as to raise each other up, ever providing more for one another so that, turning to one another and seeing there the face of God, we can truly say to each other, ‘Modah Ani Lefanecha – thankful am I before You’.

#BlogElul 5 & 6: How great is Your trust in me

August 23, 2012 /

I’m taking two of the #BlogElul themes and putting them in one for this blog – Trust and Faith.  In Hebrew, there is one word that can capture aspects of both of these english words – Emunah.  There is another word in Hebrew, bitachon, that can also convey ‘trust’, and sometimes bitachon and emunah get used interchangeably.  But in rabbinic literature, emunah is often the word that conveys both meanings.

When we awake in the morning, the traditional blessing that is recited upon noticing that we have regained consciousness is Modeh (Modah for women) Ani lefanecha, Melech Chai v’kayam, she’he’chezarta bi nishmati b’chemla rabah emunatecha: Thankful am I before You, Living and Eternal Sovereign.  You have returned my soul to me in mercy.  How great is your trust/faith in me!

The idea of waking with this blessing goes back to Talmudic times and is derived from verses in Lamentations (3:22-23) that rabbis interpreted to mean that Creation is renewed every day.  Our souls are safeguarded in God’s hands, metaphorically speaking, while we sleep and, when we awake, it is God who has restored our souls.

When I pray these words, I often focus more on the first phrase – Thankful am I before You… There is so much to contemplate in these few words.  A story is told of a Hassidic master, the Apter Rebbe, who had not started his morning prayers, yet it was now noon.  He explained that he had awoken and begun to recite modeh ani,  but began to wonder, ‘Who am I?’, and ‘Who is the You before Whom I am I?’  Still pondering these questions, he had been unable to go forward. (in ‘A Book of Life: Embracing Judaism as a Spiritual Practice, by Rabbi Michael Strassfeld, p. 5).

Focusing on the first part of the prayer can invoke a sense of awe if, like the Apter Rebbe, one truly begins to think about the essence of the ‘I’ and what we understand to be the ‘Thou’.

But the last part of the prayer is where we find the word, emunah, and the emphasis is quite different.  How great is Your faith.  Does God need faith? Surely not.  But on days when we might not feel like opening our eyes, on days when we might not be looking forward to the tasks that lie ahead, on days when we feel loss, pain, loneliness… uttering the words of Modeh Ani can remind us that each day is created anew.  We have been given the gift of today.  What shall we do with it?  When we are lacking faith in our own strength, our own abilities, or our own will to get ourselves up and out of bed, we remind ourselves that God has faith in us.  Its God’s little daily pep talk with us.

Here faith and trust are interconnected in one Hebrew word – emunah.  God has faith in us.  Our soul has been entrusted to us for one more day so that we may do something remarkable with it.  And God believes in our capacity to do just that.  God trusts that we will use this day wisely.  Rabah emunatecha, we say – Great is your faith/trust.  Why so great?  Because perhaps we didn’t use the gift we were given so wisely yesterday.  Perhaps we didn’t do all that we could have with our time.  But great is God’s faith that we may still live up to our full potential.  Preparing for Rosh Hashanah, we are invited to consider how we are using each gift – each day.  We are called upon to have the faith to believe that more is possible.  We are called upon to trust and believe that we can raise ourselves higher.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

#Epicthanks – Happy #Tweetsgiving 2010: Turning Thanksgiving into Thanks-living

November 23, 2010 /

Last November, when I was still a newbie blogger, only 2 months old, I came across a wonderful project from a group called Epic Change.  From their website, they tell their story:

Epic Thanks is a global celebration that seeks to change the world through the power of gratitude. Founded in 2008, the original TweetsGiving celebration was imagined and implemented by six volunteers in six days, and quickly became the #1 trending topic on Twitter as thousands of grateful tweets from across the globe filled the stream.
But the truth is TweetsGiving was never about twitter or social media. It’s about the gratitude in our hearts, and the transformative power our thankfulness can have when we share it with one another. It’s about cultivating a deep sense of those remarkable souls who create hope in our world. That’s why this year, TweetsGiving becomes Epic Thanks.
Over the past two years, from the gratitude of thousands, this global event has built two classrooms and a library in Arusha, Tanzania, where the twitterkids, led by local changemaker Mama Lucy Kamptoni, learn and grow at one of the best primary schools in their country.
Epic Change inspired me to write a blog for Tweetsgiving last year, and I shared a brief meditation for Thanksgiving.  This year their Epic Thanks site goes live at 12pm on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving (the same time that this blog is set to post, as are many more who are on board this year’s project).  Using Social Media, the project encourages everyone to spread some gratitude around by tweeting, posting on Facebook, and blogging on what you are thankful for.
President John F. Kennedy said “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them”, and Matthew Henry, C17th pastor taught: “Thanksgiving is good but thanks-living is better.”  The traditional Jewish prayer that we wake up to is ‘Modeh Ani lefanecha… Thankful am I before You, Living and Eternal God, who has restored my soul to me in mercy; great is Your faith.’  Sensing that God has entrusted our soul within our bodies, we are inspired (literally ‘breathed into’) as human beings to do something purposeful with this gift of life.  
If you are blessed with the ability to sit down for a good meal, among family or good friends, this Thanksgiving, add to the bounty with some ‘Thanks-living’.  Make a donation to Epic Change, or another cause dear to your heart that will make a real difference in the lives of others.  Share the things you are thankful for with those around your Thanksgiving table, but also on your Facebook page or on twitter (and use the #Epicthanks or #tweetsgivings tags when you do!).  Commit to doing one act of kindness, one deed of giving in your local community, in the coming week.  
(Congregants of B’nai Israel – we are still collecting for our ‘Kindle a Light’ program, and your gift of a Stop and Shop card of $10 or up will be distributed to the elderly in need in the community.  You can drop them in at the Temple office any time next week).
Happy Thanksgiving
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

Taking a dip in the Pool of Blessing – A Thanksgiving meditation

November 25, 2009 /




This post was created as part of a global groundswell of gratitude calledTweetsGiving. The celebration, created by US nonprofit Epic Change, is an experiment in social innovation that seeks to change the world through the power of gratitude. I hope you’ll visit the TweetsGiving site to learn more, and to bring your grateful heart to the party by sharing your gratitude, and giving in honor of that for which you’re most thankful.


This Thanksgiving offering also appears in this week’s Jewish Ledger newspaper, along with the Thanksgiving reflections of several other CT rabbis.


I’ve had the opportunity to share the following gratitude ritual at a number of retreats, conferences, and summer camp programs. It’s a way to tap into an attitude of gratitude that is part of our Jewish prayer rituals, but can sometimes get lost in all the words. So let’s focus on just one word – Barukh – Blessed. The Hebrew root of this word is also found in Berekh (knee) and Braykha (pool). Most people get the connection between the first and second of these – we bend the knee when we say the Barekhu and in the opening blessings of the Amidah. But what about the ‘pool’? We can envision a reality in which God’s Divine blessing is constantly flowing; we need only bring consciousness to aligning ourselves with this flow of blessing to experience it. As it flows from the spiritual realm to us, it is our job to send the flow back to its Source, and this is dipping into the pool of blessing, expressing our gratitude, and so the cycle continues. A colleague of mine, Rabbi Michelle Pearlman, recently likened the image, quite wonderfully, to a chocolate fountain (but one where the chocolate never runs out!)
When I illustrate this in a creative prayer service, we set up a table, decorated with watery images, into which are placed strips of blue paper, folded like ripples, each containing a gratitude teaching. Some contain traditional Jewish words, like Modah Ani lefanecha… – Thankful am I before You (the opening words of the first prayer that is traditionally uttered upon waking), but many contain teachings from other sources:
‘God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say “thank you?”’ (William A. Ward)
“Saying thank you is more than good manners. It is good spirituality.” (Alfred Painter)
‘Thanksgiving is good but thanks-living is better.’ (Matthew Henry;1662-1714)
If we remember that the fountain of blessing is always flowing, and we can always find it if we are open to receiving, each and every day becomes Thanksgiving.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

Inspirational stories of Thanks-giving

November 24, 2009 /

 I am grateful to Rabbi James Stone Goodman for this re-posting from his blog.  Following these wonderful stories, please see below for direct links to some of Rabbi Goodman’s thanks-giving poetry.
Two Thanks-giving Stories
There was a contest on the radio. Write or speak your gratitude on this Thanksgiving. What are you grateful for? the radio announcer asked. Send in your story.
I heard the winners. It was a tie. Two women, one from California, one from Massachusetts.
First, the woman from California spoke. She was a sheep rancher, she raised sheep on a ranch in California. Her father before her worked the ranch. The ranch had been in her family for several generations.
She was, I imagine, a woman in her late forties. Her husband now also worked the ranch, along with her eighty year old father. They all lived right there on the ranch.
She spoke of the difficulties in running such an enterprise these days. The cost of harvesting and processing the wool is for the first time greater than what it can be sold for, in addition to which there has been five years of drought in her area. “There’s dust in everything,” she said, “and the grazing land is parched and cracked,” her flocks thin and diminished, her father old and tired, herself and her husband frustrated.
I waited for the punch line. What was she grateful for on this Thanksgiving? I wondered.
The night before telling her story, it rained. It rained an inch and a half. The dust liquified back into the earth, the earth smoothed and healed off some of its cracks, but this was not the source of her gratitude. Certainly all the difficulties of running a sheep ranch in these days were not solved by an inch and a half of rain. This was a bonus, a sign, a clue, but not a solution, not even a temporary one, it may have been a joke: God writes straight with crooked lines. Rain, as if that would make a difference.
What was she grateful for had to do with her tired 80 year old father who has seen so many seasons come and go on the ranch, something to do with herself and her husband working the family ranch scouting the sky week after week, month after month, year after year for rain. It had to do with the shared judgment about their business which is fragile, outdated, bound up with the shared destiny of one family, one plot of land, one generation after another, being in that thing together, the tenderness as she described her father waddling into the farmhouse after a long day of work and the brave possibility that the ranch would yet turn a profit somehow. Another season. The possibility, the hope of a future, measured not only in rain but in the dignity of these human beings who hope, who imagine it working, again — for the sacred possibility of the future — hope, hope, hope. Hope sustains.
The second woman tied for first prize in the radio contest. She was from Massachusetts, a Jewish woman I imagined, from her name, from her brand of humor. She was very funny. About the same age as the other woman, late forties. This was her story: It has been almost a year since he died, she began, and still she hasn’t set up a tombstone for him. It was a marriage no one thought would work — he had been married 3 times previously, she several times herself. Neither looking to get married ever again, they met. Against all advice, against their own better judgment and plans for living, they married anyway. Out of the chaos of two lives and ex-wives and kids and step kids and recriminations they found deep love, love that outlasted the complexities of their lives, and tamed them both.
She spoke her story touching, funny, sad. A year after they married, he was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer, given not much hope for even another year. He lived six, living with cancer, with dignity and joy and living more deeply than ever before because everything was so precious. Every moment.
Now he was gone. She was broke. Public aid in Massachusetts had all but dried up. She had not been able to find full time work, she was substitute teaching in Boston. What was she grateful for? I was waiting to hear.
This: first, many friends. They called her regularly and invited her to meals, she usually declined but loved the invitations. Someone brought over a load of firewood to heat her wood burning stove as winter came on. She was grateful because she had felt her heart unlock to life so freely that it would never close again, the great gift of love that changed her permanently.
The last thing she said: I’m alone, broke, but not unhappy, not in the least afraid. As a matter of fact, I’m rather content, she said, because I believe something, my little way of thinking about things, that may sound wacky but I really believe this –
I think of him as if he has gone away somewhere ahead of me, as if to find the perfect apartment, you know something near a bookstore, where there is a cafe that serves fresh raspberries all year round. He has gone there ahead of me to find the perfect place for us, she said. I am as certain of this as I am of anything: we will meet again, and because I believe this, I am full of gratitude this Thanksgiving, content and not at all afraid of the future. Everything is possible when you believe in something.
These are the two American stories of gratitude that I heard on the radio just before Thanksgiving.
I listened and then I wrote my own tale of gratitude. It had to do, like the ones I had heard, with loving somebody, with what I believe that gets me through the long nights, with a vague sense of possibility that everything is going to be all right, of hope, I suppose, that accompanies all our lives like a sense of something fine arriving from the distance, something good, hope, that’s it.
In the distance, it’s God you are discerning, or love, or nature, or whatever it is you believe in that animates your life. This is what you are hearing bearing down on you:
be grateful, it’s going to work out, somehow
It’s going to be just fine.
james stone goodman
united states of america
For poetry from ‘Thanksgiving Suite’, by james stone goodman, please continue reading here.

17 Elul. Gratitude for Daily Miracles

September 5, 2009 /

Inspired by last week’s posting about a local Happiness Club, and ways to re-center our lives each and every day by beginning with an attitude of gratitude, congregant Beth Lazar wrote this poem – a contemporary interpretation of the traditional birkat hashachar – the morning blessings.


Thank-you God for awakening me to the new day
to You & only You I pray
Thank-you for enabling me to speak
Please accept these words of praise from your servant so meek –
Your Holy blessing I do seek.
Thank-you God 
for my eyes and the ability to see
the forces of loving friends and family
and the beauty of your creativity.
Thank-you God 
for my ears and the ability to hear
birds chirping, the wind & music
Words of wisdom & words of good cheer.
Thank-you God
for my strong arms & legs
that enable me to work & play
and get me where I want to go
and enable me to reap & sow.
Thank-you God
for the clothing on my back
healthy food, shelter, clothing
There is nothing that I lack.
Thank-you God
for these miracles You perform each day
to You & only You I pray.
Please accept these words of thanks
from Your servant so meek
Your Holy acceptance I do seek.
Have a daily affirmation that helps to orientate you for the day?  Please share it by leaving a comment.

8 Elul. The Pursuit of Happiness

August 27, 2009 /

Living a life that feels centered and whole is also living a life that feels joyful.

A congregant has been attending a local ‘Happiness Club’ .  They recently shared how some of the simple wisdom on how to live a joyful life has helped them and, with their permission, I share their reflections here:

“Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over it became a butterfly”. I reflect on this quote at my desk time and time again when I think that things may never change or improve for the better. Yet in addition, I also try to remember that it “never gets darker then midnight”. A few years back I read an interesting article about the “Pursuit of Happiness” in the Fairfield Citizen newspaper. At the end of the article it mentioned that the writer, Lionel Ketchian, also ran monthly Happiness Club meetings in the area. I was intrigued and decided to try out a meeting for myself and became hooked. 
I became a regular at the meetings for quite some time. Currently, if I can’t attend a meeting I read the monthly “Happiness Club” website columns  and become inspired. This helps to keep me afloat, remain positive, and focus on what is truly important. It reminds me to be happy and realize the beauty and value of each day. It was also through one of the Happiness Club meetings that I became acquainted with the happiness teachings of Rabbi Zelig Pliskin of Jerusalem. Each day I receive an email from him citing his “daily lift”. I begin my day by reading his message which inspires me throughout the rest of the day. Each passage is so powerful and poignant with a lesson to remember and words to live by.
Most important, between the mantra of The Happiness Club and Rabbi Pliskin, I now focus on gratitude more and more in my own daily prayers. I believe it is the key to happiness and focus on the blessings of what I have and not what I am missing. I also recite or make a daily mental list of all the “non material” things that I have and I am grateful for. The ones that money can’t buy. These are the most valuable things for which I thank God.
The first words of the traditional Jewish prayer for waking up in the morning are Modeh ani lefanecha… Thankful am I before You.  A daily practice of affirming the good in one’s life can help to set the tone for the rest of your day.  If you have a daily mental gratitude list that you wish to share, please add to the comments for this posting.
For more information about Happiness clubs, click here.
You can read the Happiness Club blog here
To watch an interview with Rabbi Pliskin, click here. 
HAPPINESS QUOTES
 
“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” – Omar Khayyam
“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.” – Epictetus

“Happiness comes from spiritual wealth, not material wealth…Happiness comes from giving, not getting. If we try hard to bring happiness to others, we cannot stop it from coming to us also. To get joy, we must give it, and to keep joy, we must scatter it.” – John Templeton 

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