Offer a child who is standing by their parent a chocolate chip cookie, and the child will give a wide-eyed "yes!" The parent will elbow them or shake their shoulder so that the child corrects themselves, "Yes please." Receiving the treat the child is nudged again to say "Thank you." They are now free to go and enjoy the cookie.

This pattern of politeness is respectful. It smooths interactions. We appreciate when someone says "thank you" when we do something for them. We also notice when people say thank you out of habit without any real appreciation.

If we go back to the chocolate chip cookie, once we say thank you, the cookie is ours. We can turn away from the person who made it and enjoy it. But what if with the first bite, we discover that this is an extra special chocolate chip cookie. The chocolate bits are really big. There are three kinds of chocolate in the cookie. The dough is melt in your mouth luscious. We really enjoy the cookie that is ours. Would we ever go back and say another, heartfelt "Thank you for this really good cookie!"

The thing about our politeness patterns is that we make gratitude into a kind of transaction. Once we have said "thank you," the thing is ours. Our responsibility for thankfulness is done. We don't owe the person we gave us the cookie anything more.

With a cookie, it doesn't matter. Cookies are made to be eaten. But transactional gratitude can become a habit. Once the formal thanks has been offered, we can possess, consume, own. The new shirt is ours to wear when we want. The house is ours to live in. The land is ours to use as we please.

Let's thing about land for a moment. The cookie gets eaten. The shirt wears out. The land endures. We are tenants on the land we own for a very short time. Others were here before us. Others will be on the land after us. What the people did on our land before we came matters to us. What we do will matter to others.

Some years ago, we bought a fifty-acre farm that had been rented out and cropped for many years. There were no fences left. Stones had not been thoroughly picked. The cement walls in the barn were crumbling. We had a ton of work to do in order to put sheep in the barn and grow hay and grain in the fields. A few years before we sold the farm, we cut back on our numbers and moved the sheep home. But the people who moved horses in appreciated the sturdy stable area and the fenced pasture.

When we bought this house on the shore, I could tell that the last people to own it were not gardeners. A wildflower called colts foot was taking over the lower part of the garden paths. But I could also tell that someone who had lived here before us was a very careful and thorough gardener. The garden was terraced with rock. Perennials were arranged in groups. I enjoy the work, and I am grateful that the structure of the garden was in place.

Land ownership is a funny thing. Gratitude for the land can help us remember our temporary time on it.

Gratitude also can help us to recognize that what we have, what we experience is a gift, not something we are owed.

Think about the sun. After last week's series of grey days, this week the sun is shining. There is some warmth in its rays. It still doesn't rise until I'm long out of bed, and it sets too early, but I appreciate its brightness. But I also know that I share its gifts with people, creatures, plants, the earth. My gratitude does not affect it, but being grateful for the sun does affect me.  It opens me to an appreciation of its gifts.

Gratitude may begin when we say "thank you" as long as we are expressing appreciation with those words, not just finishing the transaction that gets us what we want. Gratitude deepens as we appreciate what we receive. Gratitude also frees us from possessiveness and consumerism as we realize that all we experience is a gift.  

Cathy Hird lives on the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway