Along the tracks of my Harlem Line commute, I often catch a sight out the train window that seems oddly out of place. A billboard looms over the ever-congested Cross Bronx Expressway, bearing a single misspelled word: “GRATTITUDE.” No matter how early the hour, how bad the weather, or how harried the commute, the sign makes me smile.
The billboard is part of a Paint the City project with NYC-based artist Peter Tunney, to promote how people can “experience the transformative beauty of art throughout their daily lives.” (It turns out that the extra “t” is intentional, a kicker for emphasis…for attitude.)
I spied the lone GRATTITUDE last week just before Thanksgiving Day. It resonated in the context of the upcoming holiday spirit, in the historical context (the happy feast of those early immigrants, also known as The Pilgrims), and then the recent political ruckus over immigration reform. Those thoughts converged and I recalled the wonderful book, “The Middle of Everywhere: Helping Refugees Enter the American Community.”
Written by Mary Pipher, “The Middle of Everywhere” is filled with rich first-person stories from Pipher’s work with global refugees from her home base in Nebraska. She writes with candor about teaching refugees some of the basics of assimilating into our country and our culture―things like navigating buildings and bureaucracy, ordering food in a restaurant, and the daunting challenge of learning to drive.
Bibliophiles are often grateful for the transformative force of reading: the magic of how good books can serve as a wide-angled lens of a broader world view; sometimes as microscopes to create a singular, sharp focus; and other times as mirrors of our our own reflection. “The Middle of Everywhere” does all three.
I have often thought that a sense of entitlement is Kryptonite for a sense of gratitude. Pipher points out how a sense of entitlement can lead to apathy. It can cause us to miss the challenges faced by the refugees and vast opportunities of how we can help. She includes a powerful quote from a friend, one that stuck with me through the years since I first read the book and that sums up the problem with entitlement: “We were born on third base and we think we hit triples.”
Pipher is also the author of, “Reviving Ophelia,” a best-seller on the challenges faced by adolescent women in our society. Her insights offer balanced perspectives and her writing is authentic and interesting. She avoids dull academia despite the good research that her works include.
She notes, “The way people are damaged are also the ways they are made strong. Suffering can create bitter people but it often creates people with depth of character and empathy with other people’s suffering. Easy lives can produce spoiled, soft people. Hard lives can produce lovers and fighters. Refugees who make it to America manage to find meaning in their suffering. Many become kinder and more generous people. Anne Frank’s father, Otto, a refugee himself, said, ‘Giving never makes anyone poorer’.”
Today we wrap up our official Thanksgiving holiday weekend and tomorrow millions of us will return to work. Despite our usual frenzied pace, books like “The Middle of Everywhere” help to instill an ‘attitude of gratitude’ as part of our everyday reality….for everyone.
I will keep my eyes peeled for my dose of GRATTITUDE on the morning’s commute.