Don’t Let Gratitude Hibernate

Mitch Arnold • December 27, 2023

Six months ago, sitting on my patio, enjoying the abundant sunshine and warmth, I thought to myself, “What a great time to be alive!” The sun shined from the time I awoke until nearly the time I went to bed. I could have the windows open to let the fresh air in, and didn’t have to wear warm, bulky clothes. Summer weather gave me a lot to be thankful for.


I thought about that moment last week, during the winter solstice. Now, I awake and eat dinner with darkness outside. The windows are closed shut, and I’m wearing layers, even inside. Though winter weather doesn’t inspire much gratitude, gratitude should not hibernate. We just need to look harder to find it.


That’s kind of the way it goes with gratitude. When we need it most, it’s the hardest to find. It’s easy to be grateful when everything seems to be going your way. The sun is shining. You’re warm and happy, and tomorrow is something you eagerly anticipate. But what about those days when there’s more darkness in your life than sunshine? When you feel that the world is giving you a cold shoulder, and you worry about what challenges tomorrow will bring?


That was most of 1993 for me. In 1992, I had wrapped up a successful college experience, and became a high school teacher. It was now time to cash in on my hard work and dedication. Everything was going to be like college, except with a little more money and a lot less worry about college classes. Unfortunately, most of my friends were back in college, and I started to feel a little separated from them. Then, right before Christmas in 1992, my long-time girlfriend dumped me. Suddenly, nothing seemed right, and gratitude very rarely crossed my mind. When I needed gratitude most, I simply couldn’t find it.


I lost a year of my life wallowing in a negative mindset, because I wasn’t yet skilled in the art of gratitude. Sure, family and friends encouraged me to focus on all that I had to be thankful for, but I was 23 years old and lacked perspective, so I put up a wall, and instead focused on all that I had lost. To live in gratitude, you must learn how to control your thoughts, and I wasn’t there yet.


Gratitude is precisely what we need during challenging times in our lives. Beyond what gratitude does for a person’s outlook on life, it’s also proven to reduce depression and anxiety, boost heart health and relieve stress – in other words, it’s almost the perfect antidote for the mental and physical complications we experience when we’re dealing with life’s darkness.


Fortunately for me, at the end of 1993 – almost to the day of getting dumped in 1992, I rekindled a romance with my future wife, and we’ve been going strong for thirty years. Still, I wish that I hadn’t ceded so much of that year to darkness.


If darkness inside or outside has you feeling down, consider adding gratitude to your daily routine. Before you get out of bed in the morning, think about things that you are thankful for, even consider writing them down or sharing them with others. When negativity creeps into your mind, which it invariably will, use gratitude as a shield, and watch those thoughts of gratitude crowd negativity right out of your mind. Be consistent with these efforts, and soon, gratitude will become a habit.



No matter how dark and cold it may get, don’t let your gratitude hibernate.

It's Been Years

By Mitch Arnold • July 27, 2025
When I was a kid growing up in Loup City, I went to Ord at least once per month to visit my grandparents and other relatives, and it wasn’t a trip that I was always eager to make. It wasn’t that I disliked seeing my relatives, but there were other things that I would have rather been doing. I sure couldn’t imagine making that trip on my own volition, but that’s exactly what I did a couple of Saturdays ago. My grandfather has been gone for more than 40 years now, and grandmother, more than 20. I can still remember them vividly, as well as their house and the heaping bowls of fudge and caramel covered ice cream I enjoyed in their kitchen as I listened to Grandpa tell stories between drags on his unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes. Though I resisted those trips as a kid, if given the chance now, I would love to make one more visit, but time has moved on, and all I have are the memories. I’m a grandpa myself now, and that has given me a new perspective on the fleeting moments that we enjoy with loved ones. Years pass quickly these days, and with each new calendar we pin to the wall, we lose touch with people and places from our past. New people and places come into our lives, and we push aside the past to make room for them. While some of that is necessary and a part of life, I think that it’s also important to stay in touch with our roots. “How long has it been since you’ve seen your uncles?” my wife asked as we began the three-hour trip from Omaha to Ord. “It’s been years,” I replied. We don’t have the family reunions like we used to, and because travel becomes difficult or impossible for older people, we don’t have the opportunities we once had to cross paths with them. If we’re going to see the people and places from our past, we have to make an effort to do so. That’s what I was doing on that Saturday morning. My hometown of Loup City is only a 30-minute drive from Ord and just slightly off the route between Omaha and Ord, so I also took the opportunity to tour the town I hadn’t seen in more than a year. I drove the sleepy streets I once roamed on my bike. I went past the church I attended through childhood, as well as the home I grew up in and the home where my maternal grandparents lived. I stopped at my grandfather's grave and symbolically shared a beer with him. After lunch at the marina at the lake just outside of town, where I spent many summer afternoons boating with my family, I headed to Ord, driving past my aunt and uncle’s farm that I hadn’t seen in more than a decade. The Ord visit with my uncles was brief, but more rewarding than I had imagined. The laughter, smiles and stories were so familiar that it was hard to believe that it had been years since we had seen each other. I even bumped into three cousins that I hadn’t seen in years. As we headed back to Omaha, I thought about those childhood visits that I once resisted and began to appreciate why my parents insisted that we make them. Time is fleeting and waits for no one, but we can’t get so caught up in the present that we forget the past and the people and places that helped shape us into the people we are. If you have been thinking about the people and places from your past, take that as a sign that you need to visit them. Don’t just wait for the next opportunity, make that opportunity happen. You will be glad that you did.

Surviving a Collision with a Garbage Truck

By Mitch Arnold • June 29, 2025
I got hit by a garbage truck the other day, but was able to recover quickly, because it wasn’t the first time it happened, and it won’t be the last. It’s an unfortunate reality that everyone will occasionally run into a garbage truck through no fault of their own. (see ‘The Law of the Garbage Truck” below) One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport. We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean, he was really friendly. So I asked, ‘Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!’ This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call, ‘The Law of the Garbage Truck.’ He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it! Sometimes they’ll dump it on you. Don’t take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don’t take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets. The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day. The garbage truck in my latest collision was a prospect who I had never talked to, before picking up the phone and calling him about a position I was helping a client fill. Within seconds of introducing myself, his aggressive tone began to dominate. He demanded that I tell him who my client was and how much they were going to pay. I assured him that I would answer those questions once we determined that his background was a good fit and that he was interested in learning more. Finally, I offered to arrange a call at his convenience, when we could discuss the opportunity further. We never got to that point. After sending him some information on the opportunity, he repeated his earlier demands, this time through text messaging. In our exchange, I was able to determine that his background wasn’t a fit, so I thanked him for his time and asked if he could confidentially refer anyone. He responded by calling me a “god-awful recruiter.” I know that I’m a pretty good recruiter, and was fairly certain that he was a miserable person (garbage truck), but I held off on sharing those opinions with him. Instead, I just backed away, recalling “The Law of the Garbage Truck.” I wasn’t going to spend any more mental energy on him than I already had, and I surely wasn’t going to dump his garbage on someone else. Furthermore, I knew that my faith in humanity would soon be restored when I visited the gym over the lunch hour for my daily workout. Knowing that there are already too many garbage trucks wandering around out there, I try to be just the opposite, and the gym gives me a place to put that effort into practice. Because I appreciate friendly, positive people, I try to be one myself. I attempt to learn the names of the people I routinely see, like the front desk people, custodian and regular members, and I try to make connections with those who are receptive. And, I try to do that all with a smile, regardless of how I feel, even if I’m still stinging from a garbage truck collision. Per usual, the gym atmosphere didn’t disappoint. I exchanged pleasantries with people who expect me to be there at the same time almost every day, and enjoyed conversations that completely erased the garbage truck from my memory. Getting older has taught me that kindness pays dividends, and that even when it can’t save you from garbage truck collisions, it can certainly make them easier to recover from. Take the time to create a refuge of kindness that you can rely on when something like a garbage truck threatens to ruin your day. It’s worth the effort.