One for the Holidays… An Attitude of Gratitude
One for the Holidays… An Attitude of Gratitude
I was recently in touch with my American friends who were in the midst of celebrating Thanksgiving. In my humble opinion, Thanksgiving is one of the world’s best holidays. It reportedly dates back to November 1621, when the newly arrived Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians gathered at Plymouth, Massachusetts to celebrate in gratitude for the harvest. The tradition is now an integral part of American culture. People travel, sometimes great distances, to be with the people they love, and to reflect gratefully on all that they have, and in particular, the gift of each other.
The song says “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”, but Thanksgiving suggests we don’t have to wait until we’ve lost someone or something to be grateful. Gratitude is an attitude we can choose to adopt: a way of approaching life. It means occasionally making the time to stop and reflect life’s blessings; the people we love; those who have helped us on our journey; the quality of life we have inherited; even such fundamental things as our health and our freedom. Of course we want to make the world a better place, but unless we appreciate what we have, we can never be really happy or fulfilled.
Last week we hosted a diverse group of QER’s stakeholders at our plant: those who have given us the social licence to operate: the traditional custodians of the land; our rural neighbours; and community representatives; as well as those who’ve provided the goods and services we’ve needed to go about our work. The get together was a kind of QER ‘Thanksgiving’ which gave us the opportunity to express our gratitude to those people for their support and their contribution.
They say it takes a village to raise a child: it takes a community to build a resources project. As not everybody was able to visit our plant last week, I want to again take the opportunity to express my heartfelt thanks to everyone in the Gladstone community who has contributed to QER’s work over the course of this year.
From all of us at QER, we hope that your Christmas celebrations with your families are safe, happy and fulfilling and we look forward to working with you in 2020.