Many of my days I have no recourse but to take on the forces of darkness: self-absorbed people who care only about privileging themselves and their circle of sycophants at the expense of the vulnerable: students.

I fight the good fight—but it’s tiring.

And today, driving to work I felt weepy—that feeling where, if anyone looks at me cockeyed —the tears would start leaking out the corners, edges, of my eyes, like baking a blintze too long and cheese oozing out…

I had a choice to make. Stand up for a friend who had been wronged—but it was a year and a half ago…or just keep my head down and not enter the fray. Could I sit in a meeting with a wordstorm swirling around me, burrow down into my IPad, and ignore the spectacle of rewards being heaped on a man who had behaved abominably?

It certainly would be much easier to distance myself. I have done it once or twice—gotten into a book and ignored the fact the forces of darkness were trying to sell students’ education to the nearest charlatan. History, philosophy, art, literature, nah, students don’t need it- let’s just train people to operate machines without thinking. It’s great for my heart to disengage—not so much for my soul.

But today, to mentally check out and let evil be rewarded? Could I forget a friend who was wronged, hurt, made miserable? Really, I suppose there wasn’t much choice. Time has passed, it’s true. But “scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.” People must be held accountable.

In the end, of course, I put on my breastplate, picked up my spear, and went into battle.

Today gratitude seemed to take a right turn at Pluto.

I was most grateful for myself.

It used to be that a blizzard was something I actually enjoyed.

I would hunker down with a good book and cook up a big batch of chicken soup, or bake a cake and enjoy the sound of the howling winds outside while I sat, warm and cozy, seemingly invincible to the vagaries of Mother Nature.

Then came the big storm in October 2011, sometimes known as the Halloween Nor’easter and even, I later learned, Storm Alfred! And we were without power for over 5 days. And a year later there was Super Storm Sandy, where we were spared, but my neighbors had to patch in to our electric because their power was down.

So when the “Mammoth” “Massive” “Once in a Lifetime” storm started bearing down on us on Thursday, rather than planning which cake I would bake or downloading a new book, I was a mass of nerves, fearing a power outage. My town was sending out email notifications- alerting the town that power disruptions were likely. All I could think about was that the last time we had an outage was October and the temperatures were in the 40s and 50s. Now they were in the teens. Whereas I had never thought about the chaos a blizzard or hurricane could create, now it was all I thought about.

Thankfully, for us, the blizzard, though dumping a foot of snow outside our home and further beating down a shrub that has been massacred in 2011, didn’t steal our power and heat and we were really barely inconvenienced.

So although I feel that my innocence may be gone as to how I perceive storms and blizzards, I can’t help but wonder if this wasn’t a colossal wake up call, a reminder of all that I have. Like power. Like HEAT! It may be boring, but I am reminded of the words of Shoshana Zuboff, one of the first female professors to be tenured at Harvard’s Business School: “Awareness requires a rupture with the world we take for granted…” I may have lost some innocence, but hopefully I’ve picked up a heightened reverence for all of the most basic things I have – and for which I am truly grateful.

Three days ago, the Financial Times announced that the number one “toy” for kids this Christmas will be a tablet. http://www.cnbc.com/id/100337273

In November, 60 Minutes http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57556456/horrors-revealed-at-north-korean-prison-camp/ ran a story about 30 year-old Shin Dong-hyuk, believed to be the only person born in a North Korean prison camp that has escaped to tell about it. When he was asked, “Did anybody ever explain to you why you were in a camp?” Shin replied, “No, because I was born there, I just thought that those people who carry guns were born to carry guns and prisoners like me were born as prisoners.”

What do I bring up these two stories? What seemingly imperceptible thread have I found connecting them? It’s the idea that we can get “in the habit” of doing things, thinking things, believing things, if we just do it.

If we were all brought up that every day, you had to stop at some point of the day, and just really see what’s all around us, and be grateful, well that would be part of our life, as natural as well, the proverbial brushing of one’s teeth or eating sugarcane if you’re in Uganda! It wouldn’t feel foolish or be this impossible task. We would just do it, because it would become part of our DNA. We wouldn’t think about it as a difficult thing to do, it would just be something we would do as we do all the other things in our day, eat meals, watch television, feed our pets, go to work, set up play dates, rehearse a proposal, talk on the phone, solve problems.

Today,  comedians to politicians to educators, bewail the idea that younger adults don’t really talk to each other, there’s no conversation—it’s all texting. Well maybe texting has won a round, but what about us trying to win the next fight but making 2:30 pm an inviolate time where we consider all that we have?  It could be gratitude for that new Ipad or simply the fact that you were never in a North Korean prison camp.

I think perhaps this thing I have about gratefulness is a result of fear.

I am afraid that one day, I’ll wake up and everything will have changed – or for that matter—nothing EXCEPT one key, monumentally important thing has changed – and not for the good. And then I’ll be looking back on the day before and wonder how was it that I didn’t know. How was it that I didn’t realize all that I had?

My thinking about gratitude goes back a long, long time—even before codifying it with the inauguration of my running watch’s alarm. I remember working really late at CBS/Fox – 10:00/11:00 pm — leaving the office to go down to the street (6th avenue and 48th ) where a car service waited to take me home. And I remember thinking that however tired I was and however much I was pissed that I was working so late and that no one appreciated me, I was really, really grateful that I had a job where I could call for a Town car to come pick me up! And I remember thinking that at some point, maybe I wouldn’t have a job like that and I would look back at these times and wonder why I didn’t appreciate them more.

So maybe a certain soupçon of anxiety is in the recipe for my gratitude. I never want to wake up and think to myself why didn’t I appreciate the job more, before I got too old/sick /bored to do it well. Or why wasn’t I more grateful for the friends that I have before they’re gone.

I don’t really think fear should be the motivating factor for anything, but yet… If fear of a heart attack makes you lose weight, not so bad. Kudos to fear. If trepidation makes one study even harder for an exam, not so shabby. And another point for fear. If my anxiety that I won’t fully appreciate all that I have until it’s gone, makes me kiss David extra hard each morning, hug each friend I see, use my cats as blankets as I watch television and suck the juice, pulp and all, out of each day, well then is it really fear? Or is it taking time to be grateful?

And then there are the days that the well seems to run dry.

Bad people at work—I mean really bad, lying, ethically challenged, morally corrupt, the list of adjectives go on.  Simply put, imagine Republicans.

My shoulder like always is killing me.  Can barely turn my head to back out of my garage.

One of my stock accounts tells me that I shouldn’t pay attention to the daily summary as their computers aren’t really good!?!?

My little Noble doesn’t seem to want to eat his morning wet breakfast.

My hair consistently looks like shit.

In a nutshell, I don’t feel very grateful.

I think a lot about my utter dearth of gratitude at 2:30 pm – and feel pretty bummed about it.  After all, I have a great home, husband, career, friends,  enough money to do what I want, buy what I have a hankering for—how dare I not be grateful.

Then it dawns on me that I am simply being normal.  It’s impossible to keep up such a heightened sense of gratitude all the time.  Voltaire’s aphorism, “Perfect is the enemy of good” which is what Rabbi Irwin Kula talks about in one of our Mincha Moment videos, is truly something I have to take really seriously.  If I don’t feel grateful at certain points, it doesn’t mean that I am a “bad” person, an ungrateful wretch or that I won’t feel my usual sense of amazement, awe and gratitude tomorrow—when I awake and see my husband,  go out to run, post another video, eat a rare porterhouse  steak off the bar-b-q.

In the end, I guess I am actually grateful that today the well seemed to run dry.  To borrow from my good friend, Ben Franklin, “When the well runs dry, we know the worth of water.”

I may be the only one I know who actually likes to iron.

Weird, huh?!

And I actually have a bit of history with it.

Many years ago, when I went to Israel and lived on a kibbutz, I was given a choice of work placement: laundry, kitchen or children. (Much later, I fought the sexism of these positions and demanded and received a neutral job — in the chick incubator. Much later, I taught dance at kibbutzim throughout the valley- but, I digress.) I chose the laundry and when I arrived, I was asked if I was good at ironing. I remember thinking “’Good’ at ironing? Who spends any time getting ‘good’ at ironing?” But I said sure, and was given a seat at a table in the corner. It was there, piled up high, seemingly to the ceiling, were slightly damp, rolled up shirts. And it was there that I sat, from 6:00 AM every morning, and ironed. Other than a short break at 8:00 am for breakfast, (which I don’t eat) I sat at the perfect-height-for-the-job- table and ironed till noon, all the while chatting with the much older women who worked there. One of them, Hannah Fuchs, eventually “adopted” me, her family becoming my “kibbutz” family, offering me every Friday night, a place to go and be nourished and nurtured. For me, ironing was cozy, relaxing, I got a lot of work done, schmoozed a bit and felt very needed. After all, if I weren’t there to iron, half of the kibbutz would be walking around all wrinkled!

Now, all these years later, I still find ironing, in many ways, quite soothing and curiously rewarding. For in my world, where it often takes six months or more to raise the funds for a documentary, and then another wedge of time to produce it, starting and completing an activity in a number of minutes is quite satisfying. Going from a bunch of rumples to crispness without having to deal with malicious colleagues, self-important associates, and full of crap clients is a little bit of heaven.

And I like the results— so I just don’t stop after David’s dress shirts and polo shirts — no, I’ll iron my around-the-house garb and even particularly creased pillow cases. Every time I iron, I am grateful, not only for my Rowenta and the setup that makes it easy to watch television as I do my work, but for my time in Israel and the love of the Fuchs family, now all long gone. But most of all, for the ability to enjoy the simplest of activities, to see the value and beauty in the mundane and to start and complete an activity in a wrinkle of time, I am most extraordinarily grateful.

When I was in college, I didn’t want to be there. Rather than drop out, I decided to work like a maniac and graduate in three years rather than four. But that meant going to summer school and taking classes morning, noon and night.

During an intensive 3 week Intersession period, I took Elementary Spanish in the morning. 9:00 AM-12:30 PM five days a week. The professor was absolutely horrible and constantly said disparaging things—particularly about American women. All the students hated him and constantly complained—about the quizzes, his teaching …whatever, we all just thought he was the worst.

On the fifth day of class, after break, everyone again started grousing to the professor. He decided he couldn’t stand anymore and just lost it, bellowing to the class, “You don’t like it here—well, anyone who wants out, get out. I’ll give you an A or whatever grade you want, just get out.” No one moved and no one said a thing. I sat there, my heart pounding, and I thought, do it, do it, leave, leave, LEAVE, the guy is such an asshole. But I, like everyone else I’m sure, was scared—who would really do such a thing? But then from somewhere inside me, I stood up and said, “I’ll take that deal.” The professor clearly never thought anyone would take him up on his offer, paused and then said, “OK. What grade do you want me to give you?” I said, “Just give me the grade I have earned,” which I knew was a B+ because that was grade I received on the only test we had been given. He said, “Fine,” nodded to me and I left. And I had ten glorious summer mornings free—I couldn’t believe it. (Later I heard that students flocked around his desk, begging to take his offer, but he just waved them off, saying the deal was off the table.)

Fast-forward a lot of years. I am flying out to do work in San Francisco—I had cut a 30 second spot for the videocassette release of Star Wars. And who’s in first class? George Lucas. The whole trip I’m thinking, should I go and introduce myself? Why not—but then again, why bother? Although I slept most of the trip, when I was awake I was torn with indecision—it was a groupie thing to do, but on the other hand…it was George Lucas. Ten minutes before we landed, I decided to go for it. I threw open the curtain to first class, strode up to his seat and introduced myself. We chatted for maybe three minutes; I returned to my seat, I had done it.

Another billion years pass to recently. A colleague of mine had the unimaginable happen—her beloved husband passed away. She managed to make all the arrangements for his funeral, deal with her less than a year old baby and her grief at the same time. Not surprisingly, at the graveside ceremony, when she started her written eulogy, she began to cry. A friend of hers reached for the paper and began reading for her. But as I looked at my colleague, standing there alone, weeping, I thought: someone HAD to go and comfort her. Why was no one going to her? Less than ten seconds later, I picked my way through the group to her side, and put my arm around her shoulders. In a minute, I felt my colleague pull herself together, steel her resolve, and then reach for the paper, so she could deliver her husband’s eulogy. My colleague’s strength and resiliency in the face of such a loss is astonishing and I am grateful that I was able to, in a small way, aid her.

I am also so very grateful that, in times of indecision– when the results of my actions might have been inconsequential, but might have been quite meaningful — I made, for me, the right choice.

“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”

I’ve been thinking that one of the reasons it’s so hard to be grateful, is that most of us are lucky enough NOT to have been without something or someone. So we know we should be grateful for the fact that water is as abundant in our homes as air, because we’ve never had to walk for two hours to get water, wait on a line to pump it, then walk back for two hours with it balanced on our heads. We saw this situation in Uganda ten years ago—clearly hasn’t gotten much better in many parts of the world. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/22/world/africa/niger-children-miss-school-to-search-for-water.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Water, food, fresh produce, huge steaks and other assorted Bar-B- Q fare– it’s just there in our lives—always has been, always will be, yeah we’re grateful, but hard to get to excited because although philosophically we know one day it might be gone, we’re thinking, really…? for most of us- it’s always been that way, where is it going?!

“Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone…”
                Joni Mitchell, Big Blue Taxi

I’ve recently been thinking about this because in addition to the food, water, air conditioning, vacations, computers, yadda yadda that we take for granted, we probably take our friends, our colleagues at work, for granted even more. I’m not trying to delve into something that’s a really downer and a given, like how much we’d miss our friends/colleagues if they died—I’m thinking about how our life changes if our friends just aren’t around any more—they retire, go to another job, move to another city… An acquaintance of mine who has worked in an organization for over 30 years, is the only one left after a new management team retired or fired everyone around her. She said to me, “I don’t even know anyone to have lunch with!”

When I started working where I am, I had a lot of colleagues with similar values and ideas, people who I believe were thoughtful, honest and true. Over the years, many of them were offered other positions, decided to travel, retire or take up raising alpacas. I took for granted that they’d always be around to share concepts and toss around viewpoints and strategies for life. I miss them.

So I am grateful for the good people that are still there—that cause work to be interesting, occasionally fun, often funny. In the very first Mincha Moment I wrote, “Be grateful that you work with at least some people you like.”  Believe me, you can’t be grateful enough.

What now seems like a lifetime ago, David and I were working on our first documentary together. It was called Embracing Judaism: Reaching In, Reaching Out, Reaching Up. (Don’t look at me, I had nothing to do with the title—that’s all I was given and asked to create a documentary about it!)  Anyway, creating the documentary was a great experience for us—we met and interviewed absolutely super people including Rabbi Paula Mack Drill (she wasn’t a rabbi back then—I told you it was eons ago) Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter and Rabbi Woznica among others. And during Rabbi Woznica’s interview, he said the following:

People aren’t so terrific necessarily, by nature. That’s why there are 613 commandments, which tell us how to, how to be good. Children may not be so terrific by nature, so the tradition says: listen that we accept human nature, and now we’re gonna create a good human being. We’ll do all we can to create decency and goodness.

I can’t tell you why, but that has stayed with David and me for now almost 17 years. And just last year, although I hadn’t spoken to him in over a decade, I tracked Rabbi Woznica down (he moved from NY to Los Angeles) and called him. He took the call immediately, delighted to hear from me. I told him that I was calling because I thought about what he said every day, that, at heart, people aren’t so terrific and that we need rules to keep us on the straight and narrow. That these thoughts had such an impact on me and I wanted him to know that. I could tell he was absolutely thrilled – to think that someone was walking around and that you had made such an impact…!

So now fast forward, dateline present day. Coming back from a meeting, I see a student waiting outside my office. As I get closer, she starts beaming at me, the biggest most beautiful smile on her face. I smile back, though honestly, although she looks familiar, I have no idea who she is. Inviting her in, she proceeds to tell me that I had advised her years ago and told her exactly what to do to obtain the job she dreamed of. Now 6 years later, with a bevy of television internships under her belt, she was graduating from Purchase and starting to work at a great job at VHI. She says she stopped by to tell me how grateful she was and how if it weren’t for me and my colleague-in-crime Isabel, (who figured out the best college to transfer to and helped her with the admissions process) she wouldn’t be where she is.

So I am so grateful to all the people who have said or done things that have stayed in my mind, caused me to think, rethink and reflect. I am grateful to all the people who have made me smile and feel loved long after the words they said, or gift they gave, or act of “loving kindness” seemingly faded from memory. But I also am grateful to those people who have found value in what I have said or my point of view. And I am grateful to those who have the courage, fortitude, moxie ? to come and tell me about my impact on them. The “sleepers” of my life who actually say, “What you said, I have never forgotten,” or, “What you did” (some small thing that I didn’t even know would mean anything) made all the difference.”   To all of you, please know, that every time I think of you, I have a smile on my face, a bounce in my walk and a heart full of gratitude.

So I am going to go running, and I’m a little jazzed. After all, I have been running for over thirty years so that’s far more of my life as a runner than a non-runner. And quite honestly, it can get a little boring. Years ago, when I started, I would pass the time talking. I would pick up my friend Arlene, from her home on 5th Avenue and we would enter Central Park and run miles and miles. One year, when we both had rented summer homes in Greenwich and we were both training for a marathon, we used to run fifteen times around a one- mile park, putting little twigs down in one spot so we would remember what number loop it was.

Anyway, all that’s to say I’ve done a LOT of miles—gone through hundreds of tapes on a Walkman and now I must have twenty different Running Playlists. But still…after all these years, and all the marathon training, I feel that I have literally run the equivalent of to the moon— and back!!! And it’s a bit of a bore.

But now I’m jazzed because for the first time, I’ve downloaded all these comedy podcasts—and I have a vision of me upping my mileage, running for hours listening to comedy routines.

I start off with Adam Carolla, and wouldn’t you know, he starts talking about exercise. And there’s a whole riff, but at the end he’s talking about how he plays little tricks to pass the time, tricks to MAKE THE TIME go faster. And then he comments, why does he want it to go faster? He says, “I’ll be on my deathbed, and all I did my whole life, was try to trick myself and make the time pass, so I could then die. Well the jokes on me.” And I thought, he hit it on the head. I am ALWAYS impatient, tapping my toe when I wait in line, thinking of all the things I have to do, impatient to finish a run, finish the newspaper, finish the what? Rush to where? What is so friggin’ important that I don’t actually exist in the moment and feel grateful for that moment? I’m waiting on line at a drive through bank— but aren’t I grateful that I HAVE a car—AND money in the bank? God knows I remember quite clearly when I had neither. The joke is going to be on all of us if we don’t slow down and literally smell the whatever- the fresh coffee wafting out of Dunkin’ Doughnuts—(that’s my nod to David!), the grass being mowed (my mother LOVED that smell) the soft leather in the car. I have to remember not only to be grateful – but also to give myself time to be grateful. I mean when you think about it—where ARE we all running?