Just finished facilitating a 45-minute session with eight local business people on networking (the people kind, not the technology or software kind). For most of the session we talked about the usuals. We compared notes on why it’s important to nurture your network. People gave examples of actions they take to cultivate their network. We considered network as a noun instead of a verb. It’s a thing to be nurtured, not an action we have to do. We gave examples of specific activities that help to nurture one’s network.
The last few minutes of discussion turned to gratitude and thankfulness. Someone mentioned the importance of writing thank you notes when people in one’s network give of their time. Ed told us about a colleague who wrote 52 thank you notes over one year (one thank you note a week). She wrote each note to someone who had helped her in her career. She wrote the notes for no other purpose than to say, “Thank you.”
Daniel explained that he commits to “30 Days of Gratitude” on FaceBook during the month of November. Each day he writes a short post to express gratitude for someone or something. Last year his daughter joined the effort.
After the workshop concluded, I savored some of the photos I had used before closing my laptop. There were several photos from an English class my friend Emily and I co-taught four years ago at UCBC. The English class had been built around the theme, “Creation Care and the Common Good.”
On the day these photos were taken, another colleague, Jolie, led an activity to illustrate the interconnectedness of all living things in the natural world. The activity required students to toss a ball of yarn across their circle at certain points in a story about a farmer, his crops, the soil, the bugs, and birds.
I had used the picture as a visual of a network. But now I looked at the scene with a different lens. I saw the web through the lens of gratitude, and wondered…
What influence could a web of gratitude command? What if we each put a little more effort to express gratitude beyond those with whom we live and work daily? It’s easy to tell a roommate, “Thank you for picking up the mail.” We tell a partner, “Thanks for cleaning up the kitchen.”
What if we cultivated our networks as systems of gratitude?
What if we sent thank you notes to those with whom we don’t interact daily? What if sent thank you notes to people on the outer edges of our relationships?
What if we did that just once a month? What influence could we make? What changes could we bring about? And how much more gratitude could we spread if, like Ed’s friend, we wrote a thank you note once a week?
What might such a web of gratitude accomplish? What could it spark? Could it dilute the vitriol and calm the rage that permeates public discourse? Maybe.
At the very least, each thank you note would bring a moment of joy first to the writer, then to the recipient.
Maybe that’s reason enough.
PS: Thank you to Cherie Boyer, Heather Shaw, and Neworks Space (Newark, OH) for this morning’s opportunity. Without this time, I would not have been challenged to be more generous in expressing gratitude.