I’ve always found it true that in any time of difficulty, the most difficult virtue to muster is the one most needed at that moment. It’s the scariest times when Courage is most essential. We’re called on to be gracious at those times when it’s the most difficult to forgive someone. And when life hands us a long string of disappointments, no quality is more important for persevering than Gratitude.
Our national holiday dedicated to gratitude comes at a challenging time for a lot of people. Social isolation, upended household dynamics, financial uncertainty and the general, pervasive WTF of it all make for quite a combination. A LOT of families in our Dojo community have lost loved ones over the past several months. Still, I know from my discussions with even the hardest-hit families over the past several months that they remain thankful for everything they do have. Gratitude is, after all, in the DNA of a warrior.
We’re grateful for our health, so we nurture it, and do the work that makes us stronger and more durable. We’re grateful for our smarts, so we feed our minds, and sharpen them and learn to better focus them. And we train our minds and bodies together to be able to fight, if ever necessary, to protect ourselves and our greatest source of gratitude: our loved ones. It is our Gratitude, as Cicero says, that causes us to develop all of our best qualities.
I speak for Tashi Caroline and the rest of our Dojo team when I say that you, our Dojo family, is the source of immense gratitude and at the top of the list of blessings we constantly count. And we wish you all the happiness and reward that comes from Gratitude, all through the year.