Choose GR’attitude
“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”
Wilder’s “Our Town” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1938… and like much of his work connects the commonplace to the cosmic.
While this blog features a whole section dedicated to the idea of gratitude, I thought Wilder’s quote deserved some special attention here. A favorite of mine, the quote possesses the same reverence for the everyday as his most beloved work, “Our Town”—a play in which the critic Brooks Atkinson said Wilder, “transformed the simple events of human life into universal reverie… and gave familiar facts a deeply moving, philosophical perspective.”
It’s a perspective that turns the most commonplace moments in the placid town of Grover’s Corners into moral lessons. A view of the world in which gratitude is not simply benign appreciation but a deliberate practice. And one that we’ve come to learn has many benefits, ranging from a greater sense of well-being to healthier interpersonal relationships
All the talk of practicing gratitude suggests that “being grateful” is a choice. I believe it’s two choices. Two separate acts of expressing and reflecting—of Giving (G) and Receiving (R). It’s in a certain attitude towards the world—and one Wilder possessed in spades. Which is why I choose the spelling GR’attitude here.