Through the years I have become much more conscious of eating food that is good for me.  Not that I was ever awful at it, but my habits needed some adjustments to be more healthful.  A couple of years ago I developed a taste for strawberries, melon, blueberries, grapes and fruit for breakfast.  Now most every morning I have a bowl of some combination of them.  I have always kept bananas around as they are my favorite fruit and today I could easily be writing about them.  However, it’s strawberries from my fridge pictured above that have my attention so I can express my gratitude for them.  Not just for the strawberries, but the amazing fact that I can get them year round.  Of course, they are sold at a better price in-season but the fact that in the middle of winter I can buy them blows my mind!

When I step back and begin to express gratitude for the ability to get strawberries every day, it is the people who make it happen that deserve my thanks.  I did a little homework on how they are grown commercially today and my list of people to thank got pretty long.

• The person who plowed the field and made the mounds to plant on
• Those who installed the drip irrigation system in the mounds
• The one at a nursery who took the cutting for a new plant
• The packer that got the new plant ready to be shipped. 
• The man or woman who drove the truck that carried the new plants to the farm
• The person who planted the new plant
• The one who fertilized the strawberry plants
• The people who covered the plants with plastic so they stay moist and the one who punched the holes for the plants to “breathe”
• The human hands that “weeded” the plants and cut off runners
• The person who picked the strawberries and packed them.
• The drivers responsible for the berries getting from the field to a wholesaler then to a grocery store
• The produce stocker who put them out in the store so I could buy them
• The checkout person who I paid for the strawberries

And I won’t even get into all the people responsible for making the car that I drove the strawberries home in or the refrigerator that keeps them fresh.

You may be thinking that this is a pretty stupid thing to be writing about and expressing gratitude for.  But I disagree.  By my count it took at least 15 people that were directly involved so I can have my strawberries for breakfast.  Yet, I know I have only scratched the surface.  The actual tally is probably several times that.

This sort of thinking has me recently pondering everything from the shirt I put on to the pine board I purchased to make a home repair.  I wonder how many people’s work it took for me to be able to have a product.  Many people return a good deed by “playing it forward” and that is a wonderful practice. I have a new practice that is similar.  I stop here and there and “play it backwards” and think about all those responsible for all the things I am able to have.  I feel that expressing a little silent gratitude in “backwards” fashion sends goodness to them.  But to a much greater degree those thoughts enrich me by just thinking them and through that gratitude I feel more connected to the great circle of humanity.

We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.  Cynthia Ozick