Thanksgiving and the Spirit of ON

by Gregg Krech

“In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich. It is very easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements in comparison with what we owe others.”
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I once traveled with a friend who had great insight into human nature. He said, “Wherever you go you can find something to complain about.” If we travel, we can complain about lumpy beds and crowded airports. But if we stay home, we can complain that we never go anywhere interesting and there’s never anything good on television. When I first went to Japan about twenty years ago I had a little book of phrases to help me communicate in Japanese. I had purchased it without thoroughly examining it, but when I was in Japan I read it carefully. I was amazed at how many phrases were designed to help the traveler complain about something. In the “hotel” section of the book, about one third of the phrases showed you how to complain about some problem at a hotel (“The air conditioner in my room does not work properly.”) Yet in that same section, there wasn’t even one phrase that helped you express appreciation (“Thank you for cleaning the room while I was out.”) The authors of the book apparently assumed that English speaking people in Japan have a great need to complain.

In Japanese language there is a term -- on. The meaning of on often includes a sense of gratitude combined with a desire to repay others for what we have been given. It’s not just that we feel grateful, or that we express our gratitude, but that we actually experience a sincere desire to give something back. We might think of it as appreciation that stimulates a sense of obligation. Not an externally imposed obligation. But a sense of obligation that arises naturally within us as we recognize how we have been supported and cared for by others.

“ In between birth and death everything I have is a gift – my body, the clothes I wear, the knowledge I have, family and friends, hobbies I enjoy, the house I live in, and so on. The are all “mine”, but only as things temporarily entrusted to me during my sojourn on earth ”
- Rev. Taitetsu Unno

So how do we go from a complaining life to one which cultivates, and is grounded in, a spirit of on – a spirit of Thanksgiving? . . .

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