THE SURPRISING POWER OF GRATITUDE by Penny Hutson

It’s November, and on the East Coast that means two things. The weather cools and the leaves turn to a beautiful red, gold, and orange. Across America we also celebrate one of my favorite holidays – Thanksgiving. Family and friends gather around the table for a wonderful meal in a meager attempt to honor the shared autumn feast between the Plymouth colonists and the Native American Wampanoag people back in 1621.

During the Thanksgiving holiday season, we often talk of being grateful or giving thanks for what we have. The word “thanks” is even in its name; but if you knew the true benefits of being grateful, you’d want to do it all year long.

In M.J Ryan’s Attitudes of Gratitude: How to Give and Receive Joy Every Day of Your Life, the author lists fifteen ways that being grateful is good for us. She calls them “the gifts of gratitude.”

While I won’t write about all fifteen, I will highlight a few that surprised or enlightened me. Of course, she included the more obvious results like feeling more joyful, kind and generous.

What I found interesting, however, was the medical evidence she cites showing that emotions such as gratitude and love strengthen and enhance our immune systems. When we harbor negative emotions like worry, anger, and hopelessness, we can reduce the number and slow down the movement of disease-fighting white cells in our bloodstreams. That’s not good.

However, the findings suggest that when we focus on being grateful, it reduces those negative emotions and instead releases endorphins into the blood stream. Endorphins are the body’s natural painkillers, and they stimulate the blood vessels. This leads to a relaxed heart and reduces the amount of adrenaline in our bodies which constrict blood vessels and raise blood pressure. In fact, too much adrenaline in our system can also damage arteries and even the heart itself.

So, while you may have known that being grateful is good for your health, you may not have known the specifics.

Ryan says that gratitude also keeps us current because “. . .when we experience a sense of gratefulness, we are usually contemplating some present circumstance.” We stop thinking about any past failures or future worries; thus, Ryan explains, “we are brought up to date with ourselves.”  In other words, we can’t harbor opposite emotions at the same time. We can’t be both happy and unhappy in the same moment. I suppose we could flip back and forth; but to Ryan’s point, if we’re practicing and truly focusing on being grateful, we won’t be focused on what’s wrong in our lives. She recommends we practice being grateful daily. I found all this information rather insightful.

Gratitude also cures perfectionism, according to Ryan. As a self-described perfectionist myself, I am particularly excited by this prospect. First, Ryan quotes Sarah Ban Breathnach who reminds us that after creating the earth, even God declared it “very good” not “perfect.” I don’t think she’s suggesting God is less than perfect. I believe her point is that He would not expect us to be.

Ryan points out that “. . . perfectionism is born of a sense of inadequacy, of lack,” and that “. . . gratitude counteracts it by tapping us into the experience of abundance.” Again, if we’re focused on what we’ve accomplished versus what’s yet to be done, we are less likely to feel inadequate and better able to resist the urge toward perfectionism.

Another surprising gift of gratitude is that it draws people to us and helps us keep them in our lives. “When we are grateful,” says Ryan, “we exude happiness and that makes us magnets that draw people toward us.” It’s true, I believe. Don’t we all prefer to be around upbeat, happy people? Of course, we all complain occasionally, but no one likes a constant whiner or an overly negative person.

And the last one I’ll mention is how gratitude can release us from the ‘gimmes.” According to Ryan, consumer debt and personal bankruptcies are “. . . at the highest level in U.S. history.” I didn’t research the accuracy of that fact, but I do know we are a culture of consumers and credit card debt. Rarely does a week go by at my house without at least one Amazon delivery. Ryan’s suggestion is to not buy anything new, except for food, for two weeks. During that time notice what you liked about that shirt or other items you already own. Focus on what you have. Ryan claims this gift can help us get “. . . off the consuming treadmill so many of us are caught on.”

The second half of Ryan’s book, which I did not discuss, details how to cultivate and create an attitude of gratitude all year, along with daily practices that will deepen your journey into a more joyous life.

May you have a wonderful, happy, and more grateful Thanksgiving.

Agatha Christie - Pick Your Poison by Teresa Inge

While participating on the Agatha Christie panel at the Murder, Mystery, and Mayhem event this year, we discussed Christie’s fascination with using poisons to kill many of her characters. Thanks to her work as a nurse and a pharmacy dispenser during World War I, her knowledge of poisons was extensive.

In her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, strychnine is featured, and it is described as an ideal poison for a writer due to its rapid onset and dramatic effects. But the poison she used most frequently is Cyanide, appearing in And Then There Were None and The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side. In other books, victims die from arsenic, digitalis, and morphine.

However, Christie was not the first writer to introduce poison in a mystery novel. She just used them with such incredible detail, that a reader could learn about a new poison and its effects instantly. This method made her novels quite sophisticated to readers during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction in the 1920s and 1930s, which is often referred to as the Golden Age of Poisons, largely due to Christie and her contemporaries who used toxins to dispatch characters in their novels.

The panel discussion continued with the methods of murder that mystery writers use today to bring about a character’s demise. These include stabbings, shootings, blunt objects, fire, drowning, and strangulation.

However, the use of poison still continues in culinary mysteries and other genres. Writers use plant poisons such as hemlock, lily of the valley, poisoned mushroom, Nicotine, and Oleander. Drugs and medicine include insulin, sedatives, Tylenol, and Fentanyl. All of which are fascinating to today’s mystery readers.

Since Agatha Christie was a "pick your poison" writer and most likely had fun with it, in many ways, poison became a personality in her stories which is almost a cliché today. But her novels live on due to her well-crafted plots, interesting characters, and realistic descriptions of the toxin's symptoms, which is why she is crowned "The Queen of Crime."