To the Editor,
I read an interesting article in the Review recently titled “The Benefits of Gratitude.”
It brought to mind an old practice that has all but disappeared from our culture, the words THANK YOU. I tend to be generous, sometimes to a fault and am surprised and disappointed when I don’t receive so much as an acknowledgement of my gifts. I have given expensive paintings, money and many sizable gifts for weddings, birthdays, and other occasions like going away presents with never a word from the recipients. I sometimes wonder whether these have been lost and never arrived. Am I too sensitive? Too old fashioned? When I was a child, those words were among the first we learned. PLEASE and THANK YOU were an essential part of our vocabulary and something we passed on to our children. It usually included a written note sent by post to our benefactor.
I remember funny anecdotes about this. One young man had thanked his aunt with the following. “I don’t have words to thank you enough for your generous gift, Auntie.” In response, the following year, he received a dictionary. At a wedding celebration, the groom who struggled with English thanked the guests, “I tanks you from de bottom of my ‘eart and my wife she tank you from her bottom too.”
The words THANK YOU were very much a part of our lives until recently. Perhaps the shorthand of social media and the virtual world have seen those old-fashioned words disappear like the buggy whip. I suppose we are to assume that our gifts were somehow acceptable if they were not returned. Yet deep down I feel saddened by this loss of basic good manners and decency. “The Benefits of Gratitude” mentioned above remind us that there are very positive effects to being thankful and, I might add, to acknowledging it as well.
Leola Meagher
