JAKOB'S JOURNAL

Unless I forget to brush my teeth, each night I savor a blessing.

By attaching something that I struggle to make routine (pondering gratitude) to an act that I do every day (brushing my teeth), consistency with the latter becomes practical.

Think hard on your day for just one minute or two. How fortunate were you today? By your standards? By the standards of a homeless child? By the standards of a woman widowed by war? What blessings do you have to be thankful for? If you cannot find even one, your perspective is probably out of wack. Adjust.

Think about how wonderful a life you live, that blessings, maybe small, come daily, and rarely do you have to sacrifice comfort and convenience unless you choose to.

Some will never know the blessing of choice, or the blessing of free thought.

Revel in that while you cook dinner tonight, or during a shower, or what have you.

Brush your teeth, savor a blessing.

Nobody ever gets an accurate reading of their contribution to the world.

Did people applaud you? Will they hold you in higher regard?

There are no hard statistics on true impact.

You’ll never see a graph or chart that depicts it.

When you die, the real imprint you’ve left behind will never be quantifiable.

How far down the line will one act of kindness go? Will the elementary school kid that you coached in hoops become an NBA star one day? Will that NBA star fund a neighborhood development program back where he grew up? Will that neighborhood produce a morally sound mother that births a world leader who eventually solves our sustainability crisis and saves the planet?

One small deed done yesterday might change the world 200 years from now, but nobody is going to give you the credit.

For generations to come, your acts of kindness, your courage, are like a stone plunging into a lake.

The initial splash depends on the size of the stone, but the real impact is in how far the ripples will span.

You’ll be at the bottom of the lake before the last wave brushes the shoreline.

There’s no glory in it for you.

Yet, oddly enough, we all know and feel that it’s the right thing to do:

to serve others.