Photo credit to Robert Thurman and The Africa Yoga Project The gift of giving In my family there was always a certain sprinkle of magic as Christmas approached. My Muslim father would climb into the loft and we would steady the ladder and try not to breathe asbestos as he tugged on boxes and bags that had been carefully packed up 11 months earlier. My Jewish best friend would be there beside me, her eyes as full of wonder as ours as we carefully unwrapped tinsel, fairy lights

Gratitude appears to arise from a sense that you’re indebted to another person for taking care of you in some way, but looking deeper, you’ll see that the feeling is actually a heightened awareness of your connection to everything else. Gratitude flows when you break out of the small, self-centered point of view—with its ferocious expectations and demands—and appreciate that through the labors and intentions and even the simple existence of an inconceivably large number of pe