Wanting Came First; Gratitude Much Later 

I don’t remember being grateful very often when I was young. I remember wanting things – lots of things – all the time.

As a child, I wanted toy trucks and cap guns and Lionel trains and baseball mitts. I wanted toy soldiers and model planes and erector sets. I wanted everything I saw advertised for boys and everything other kids at school had, including boxed lunches and meat sandwiches instead of peanut butter and jelly in a paper bag.

As a teenager, I wanted to live in a nice house instead of the small, shabby house my seven siblings and I grew up in. And I wanted that to be in the “rich” part of town, not across the street from the municipal storage facility and the railroad tracks.

Most of my feelings were focused on wanting, not gratitude, but I was thankful for things when I got them.

I was, for example, thankful to Bruce Conger’s family for donating a box of his clothes to our family one Christmas. Bruce was the coolest dresser in 7th grade. By wearing his secondhand clothes (tight, olive-green pants with creases so sharp they could cut you; shiny black shoes with pointed tips and sky-blue cashmere socks), I felt, for the first time, what it was like to look cool. I’m still thankful to Bruce’s family for that.

I was also thankful when my godmother, Jean Kerr, gave me half of a share of one of her plays. It wasn’t one of her big hits, but it was enough to buy me a brand-new pool cue that I used at the Rockville Centre Cue Club.

In my senior year, I had already lost my faith in religion. But when, after having gotten caught in a riptide at Jones Beach and given up my life in an exhausting attempt to swim directly ashore, I was carried by the current around the jetty and back to safety, I was grateful. Very grateful.

Otherwise, as I said, I spent most of my emotional energy wanting things.

After high school, I was grateful that I wasn’t drafted into the Vietnam War. Someone from my local draft board called me and told me that I was to report for duty, but they never followed up on that call and I never heard from them again. I can only imagine that my file was lost. I still sometimes expect it to be found… and then find myself the oldest recruit in the Army.

In college and graduate school, I developed an appreciation for learning and learned to be grateful for the great teachers I had. Harriett Zinnes, who taught me something about poetry, and Lillian Feder, who taught me to love good writing, were two of the best.

In my mid-20s, I spent two years in the Peace Corps. I remember sitting on my porch in Africa, watching the rain pour down on my plaster-coated mud house and thinking, “You may get rich one day, but you’ll never live in a house that will give you more pleasure than this one.”

I was grateful for that house – for having the privilege to live in it when so many of my students lived in shacks. And I was also grateful for my gratitude. I had begun to understand how good it feels.

When I returned to the States, a married man, I remember feeling grateful each time one of my sons was born. And I remember feeling grateful when, on Sundays, we would take the children on walks up and down 16th Street in Washington, DC, to look at the stately buildings and mansions. Perhaps because of my Peace Corps experience, I was never envious of those who lived in those elegant homes. My gratitude was for the people who’d had the wealth and the taste to build them.

In 1982, we moved to South Florida and I took a job with a small newsletter publishing company. I felt lucky to have the job – running the editorial department – because it meant that I was on my way to achieving my longtime goal of becoming a writer.

But two years later, I had a change of heart. I switched my goal from writing to making money. And when I did that, I once again lost track of the feeling of being grateful.

It was an interesting experience. I was fired up about making money. And I spent all my emotional energy pursuing it. But looking back now, it’s clear to me that I was once again preoccupied with wanting things. I wanted a higher income. I wanted money in the bank. I wanted a new car. And I wanted a mortgage-free home.

I’ve written a good deal about the tricks and techniques I used to acquire a lot of money during those years. But I’ve written too little about how ungrateful I was for the things that money bought me. I felt like I deserved them. And the moment I got something I wanted, I was thinking about the next thing I wanted.

When I turned 50, I abandoned the goal of increasing my wealth. I recognized that in making wealth my number one goal, I had gained one thing of value, but had lost many others.

I am grateful now that I made that decision at 50 and that it wasn’t already too late. I remember the time I visited JSN, my first and most important mentor in building financial wealth. He was dying of pancreatic cancer. I was there to say goodbye to him. I wanted to tell him how much I loved him. He wanted to give me a list of half a dozen deals that he wanted me to finish after he died.

If I had to name four things that I’m most grateful for, I’d say the obvious:

1. I’m grateful for K and our children, their spouses and our grandkids.
2. I’m grateful that they (and I) are mentally and physically healthy.
3. I’m grateful to have so many good friends, some of whom I’ve known since grammar school.
4. I’m grateful for being able to spend most of my working hours these days writing – which was my first and most important lifetime goal.

If this sounds just too pompous and self-aggrandizing, I should admit that I am still capable of being grateful for material things. I am, for example, grateful for my 30-year-old NSX, my 14-year-old 12-cylinder BMW, and my 21-year-old Ford Ranger pickup truck. I’m grateful for my art collections. And I’m grateful for my homes in Delray Beach and in Nicaragua, each of which give me as much pleasure (in a different way) as the mud house I lived in 45 years ago in Africa.

What’s on your gratitude list?