By Mark E. Smith
At this writing, I’ve just spent a week at a summer camp full of kids between the ages of eight and seventeen. It had all you’d expect at summer camp – swimming, fishing, boating, arts-and-crafts, horseback riding, and on and on.
However, what was different than any camp I’ve experienced was what occurred at one o’clock every afternoon. The campers – who happen to have a myriad of physical disabilities – gathered in the lodge after lunch for “Pat-on-the-Back Time.” It really should be called “Gratitude Time” because for one-half hour, kids raise their hands and express their gratitude for their peers and counselors at camp, as well as their experiences.
As you might imagine, for us adults, it was a profoundly moving experience each afternoon. To witness children with severe disabilities – many of whom having undergone countless surgeries, many using wheelchairs, all facing exceptional daily adversities – express gratitude from the heart was breathtaking. After all, such children have been through a lot, and face exceptional challenges every day; yet, their expressions of gratitude are unyielding.
Now, you may find those sentiments extraordinary, that children facing such adversities can express such unyielding gratitude toward even the smallest of deed done by another or the most typical of activity – an eight-year-old thanking her counselor for holding her hand in the swimming pool. However, as I sat and listened to their outpouring of gratitude each day, I found the children teaching me more than I ever expected.
See, their gratitude, while clearly an exception in our society, should be the rule. How many times in our careers do we hear colleagues diminishing each other instead of praising? How many times do our children have an accomplishment, and we don’t acknowledge it? How often do we go for days, months, years without complimenting our spouse? How often do we walk away from a cashier or waiter or bus driver without saying thank you? How often do we spend our time wanting instead of appreciating? How often do we dwell on negatives instead of embracing positives? The answer for most is, more often than not. It’s the society we live in – just look around – and it pulls us all down.
The fact is, there’s something really wrong when we, as adults, have to go to summer camp and learn from children how to be more heartfelt individuals of gratitude. And, yet, there’s hope in it all. If children of such adversities can express such appreciation, gratitude and love… we all can.
PowerchairDiaries 
Thanks for listening to our peers who are children, they do things and say thing that we often do not listen too or forget what it was like to be their age. A learning experience for us all, especially those of us who are severely physically disabled….