Todd Aaron Jensen - On Gratitude: Sheryl Crow, Jeff Bridges, Alicia Keys, Daryl Hall, Ray Bradbury, Anna Kendrick, B.B. King, Elmore Leonard, Deepak Chopra, and 42 More Celebrities Share What Theyre Most Thankful For

THIRD GRADE: Mrs. Bammel, pregnant with her first child, cracks open the math book. It's time to teach negative numbers. It goes like this: You start at zero. If you move to the right of zero, you're in the positive. Simple stuff: 1, 2, 3. If you move to the left of zero, you're in wait? What? Negative numbers. Makes no sense: -1, -2, -3 . As toe-tinglingly in love as you are with Mrs. Bammel, with her Dutch-boy haircut, caramel voice, and bottomless treasure chest of glue, glitter, and felt, you have to protest. Mrs. Bammel, excuse me, Mrs. Bammel. Why in the world would we count negative numbers? That's counting what's not there!

Mrs. Bammel makes a decent mathematical argument, though at nine years old, you're still scratching your head. Thirty years later, you are an expert in negative numbers, a master at counting what's not there.

You count the things you've lostthe lack. It goes like this: You lost your marriage, your best friend, your house, your dog, all of your grand-parentsand quickly. You lost your favorite shirt (the proverbial shirt off your back, one supposes). You've either lost money or a laundry list of dreams you had when you were a kid, maybe both, and probably a little faith, too. Your life is a veritable country-western song. And you don't even like country-western music. Here you are: The becoming has led you to being all the things you've always feared or hated.

You can count your lack forever, and it's easy to do, and if you're always only counting then you're always never at risk of losing anything ever again.

Except even when you think you've lost everything, you're never without. In fact, this is the perfect moment to allow gratitude to be your guru, to whisper with grace small words of thanks for everythinganythingin your life. Begin like this: I am alive.

The funny thing about life's riches, they were always there; I wasn't. Becoming present was not the result of therapy, or chiropractic adjustments, or yoga, or aimless road trips, though all of those things certainly helped. The real key was, simply, listening without borders, boundaries, or expectations. Letting go of the knowing and, really, just living in the experience. You are surrounded by people who are living in bliss. I was. I am. And it is our duty, as Kurt Vonnegut shared weeks before his passing in 2007, to help each other through this life in whatever ways we can.

As a journalist, it is my job to listen. So, discarding the third grade math lessons of Mrs. Bammel, I chose to listen. Really listen. And an ode to joy is what I heard, sung in the voices of our modern-day godssuperstars of the silver screen, the sports arena, the pop charts, and the printed page. Men and women who, in some cases, were born to poverty, stricken with terminal illness, saddled with sad songs and brutal stanzas, and yet not only survived, but thrived, and did so with a powerful sense of abundance. These people, they do not only thank their agents and their parents on awards shows, but many of them maintain very active gratitude lists even when the world is not looking.

What I found: Listening felt good. It felt great. I was receiving so much, by simply being more present. This was an enormous gift I was given, with each conversation, each simple parable, anecdote, testimony, or revelation. The more I listened to the gratitude of others, the more grateful I felt in my own life, and the more compelled I felt to share with others that which was given to me. You cannot read these interviews without being reminded of the great gift that is your own life, without experiencing a profound ignition of your own passions and curiosities about the world in which we live, without discovering anew or for the first time high magic and low puns and great possibilities and unexpected delights that exist right here and now in this universe. Your universe.

That is the intention of this book. On Gratitude is an invitation, first, to listen, to be moved as I have been moved, and then, more importantly, to share in turn, that together we might launch a revolution of sorts, a minor movement toward a higher consciousness that puts at a premium the simple act of counting our blessings and sharing them with others.

If we teach that which we most need to learn, then call this my path and I will walk it, and proudly. I ask that you join me. How beautiful would this world be if we counted all that we have and not what we've lost or never had? It may be that you are grateful for your library card or an old pair of overalls surviving cancer or coming to America the Sondheim songbook or the sojourn to Egypt a fruit drink from the Philippines or your first typewriter avocados or baseball. These are a few things I heard about when I began listening.

Truth is, though, your gratitude means as much as anyone else's. And so I am listening, still. We are listening. The world is listening. Wherever you are, let it begin now, like this:

I am grateful for

Todd Aaron Jensen