Have A Gratitude, Not An Attitude… JFK’s Lesson of Receiving a Gold Coin Charm

A letter written by young Naval Officer at the time, John F. Kennedy, thanking for the gift he received from Clare Boothe Luce,(1903-1987) who was a family friend of Kennedy’s. The gift was a gold coin which belongs to Clare’s mother.
Young JFK wrote…

“I came home yesterday and Dad gave me your letter with the gold coin. The coin is now fastened to my identification tag and will be there, I hope, for the duration. I couldn’t have been more pleased. Good luck is a commodity in rather large demand these days and I feel you have given me a particularly potent bit of it.

The fact that it had belonged to your mother and then to you, and you were good enough to pass it along to me – has made me especially happy to have it.”

Can you feel the “Sincere Gratitude” in JFK’s voice? (Only partial letter is given above.)

Again in 1943 JFK wrote Luce another letter…

He enclosed a gadget, originally intended to be a letter opener, made with debris, and wrote;

“… from a Jap 51 cal. bullet and the steel from a fitting on my boat, part of which drifted onto an island”
He concluded with a word of thanks for Luce’s earlier gift:

“With it goes my sincere thanks for your good-luck piece, which did service above and beyond its routine duties during a rather busy period.”

Obviously this good luck coin or the charm had worked or not is not the question. But the lesson JFK taught us. Even with a dramatic experience rather than disregarding that the charm did or did not work he took the position that it worked and had the Gratitude to thank the giver of the charm.

It shows the power of positive attitude. Not to mention one’s character. And we all must have being in this kind of situations may be not dramatic. But believed in something and gone good or bad.

Today this kind of “Gratitude” is almost nonexistence with the “Instant Gratification” that people have got used to in our modern society.

The question is did we remember to appreciate and show the “Gratitude?” Or do we complain about the situation rather than be thankful of what we already have and accomplished?

I say we try “Gratitude without Attitude.” And life gets easier and much happier if you practice this concept. And you would be stress free too.

Let me know if you had this kind of experience and how you react? And don’t we all love a Lucky Charm of our own?