Scrub Jays, Eight Year Olds, and Armenians

I've come across a lot of suggestions in my reading that being grateful is sort of a good thing.  This isn't amazing.  What is amazing is that the realization is usually stupefying, hitting me as sort of an electric shock, a jolt of recognition.  

I'm not sure I'm living on a higher plane if it surprises me, over and over, time and time again, that I should be grateful for things.

"Wow," I think.  "That's a great idea.  I should try it some day."

Seriously, I do have a Gratitude List that I ponder every morning.  It's full of big, astounding things, incredible gifts that I've been given, major things like health and a good spouse and friends and a Very Fast Car.  As with many routines, however, musing on my blessings can become a rote exercise, a practice where I'm saying the words superficially and not absorbing them deeply.  I often take these blessings for granted.

So one of the books suggested a daily, one-off, unique expression of gratitude.  I've been doing this and also forgetting to do it sometimes.  I've never been comfortable with someone, say, gushing over a beautiful sunset.  It seems emotional, superficial, too touchy-feely for me.  But ever onward and upward, right?  Quitting drinking seemed like a stupid idea a long time ago and look how that turned out.

One day I tossed a few peanuts on the ground.  This local bird - the scrub jay - bright blue, a real talker, swooped in, grabbed a nut, and went to work with Germanic purpose.  He banged the nut on the ground until the shell fractured and he could get at the seeds inside, which he then banged on the ground, eating the small shards that resulted.  After a few peanuts he grabbed an intact shell and flew off, bringing dinner to someone else, I assume.

One day the 7 year old granddaughter of our best-friend neighbors wandered over.  Like a lot of kids she doesn't know what to make of my stream-of-consciousness, non-sequitur bullshit but she always runs over and hangs out for a while.  I got a couple of big hugs.

Yesterday an appliance repairman showed up to fix my balky stove.  He had a heavy accent.  I always compliment people on their accents and then try to guess at their heritage.  Armenian.  I guessed Greek.  Was I in the game?  He didn't seem to be offended.  He did seem to be surprised that I knew so much about the Caucasus and wanted to visit the area some day.  We had a free-form, wide-ranging conversation about peoples and travel and his life.  This dude - this dude repairing my general electric gas range, speaks four languages.  Four as in one more than three.  Armenian, English, Russian, and one other that I forgot because I was so blown away at the first three.  He's pondering a class to learn Spanish.

He seemed pleased when I told him: "You should be working as a translator somewhere."

When he was wrapping up his work and stood and said to me very formally: "I like my job because I get to meet people like you."  We shook hands and off he went into the night.