Finding Gratitude in Simple Abundance

Why does this September seem busier than ever? We’ve launched our new dance season, welcoming back many familiar faces among our families, faculty, and student assistants, while also greeting new members to our community. We hosted team-building for our ballet and performance companies, spent the summer dancing at the DECA farmers market, and capped off the month with performances and a Pegasus booth at the Danforth East Arts Fair. So many exciting events, filled with joy and activity!

Amidst the busyness, we find ourselves deeply grateful as we celebrate the start of our 38th season. As we look ahead to Thanksgiving, it's a perfect time to rest, breathe, and cherish moments with our families. This October, like every year, brings a focus on gratitude, and this year is no exception.

October is a time I reflect on the theme of gratitude and how we can instill this in our children. It's so easy to get caught up in everything we’re doing—our to-do lists, the pressure to keep up with others, and the comparisons that social media constantly reinforces. Our children, too, are watching, absorbing these influences from their peers, teachers, parents, and the media around them.

Do you remember the Eaton’s Wish Book from the ‘olden days’? That catalog, filled with dreams of holiday gifts, would spark hours of imagining what we might receive. Today, it feels like the 'wish book' is everywhere, all the time. Maybe you had a parent who made you sift through your toys to decide what to donate, making room for the new things. It was the promise that these new things would bring happiness, with smiling faces and joyful moments. But is that what truly fills our hearts?

Let’s pause for a moment. Where am I going with this reflection on gratitude? We’ve all heard about gratitude journals—writing three things each night that we are thankful for—or the tradition of sharing what we’re grateful for around the Thanksgiving table. While reflecting on this, I was reminded of a book I once gifted my mother, which I later inherited after her passing. It had been tucked away on my bookshelf, but when I rediscovered it, my heart filled with gratitude.

As many of you know, my mother, Lynda Johnson, was a visual artist, and together we co-founded Pegasus Dance and Art Centre (original name). She had an artist’s eye, always noticing and, in her words, “relishing” the simplest things. The book I found is Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy by Sarah Ban Breathnach, which gained popularity when it was published in 1995. My mother was a special person who ‘relished’ every encounter and experience—she had many adventures!—and continued asking about students and families even from her nursing home. I am deeply grateful to have had such a wonderful influence, teacher, and mother. The values that guide Pegasus to this day were shaped by her.

The inscription I wrote to her on June 9, 1998, reads:
Dear Mum,
Thank you for giving me the opportunities, support, and guidance to follow my dreams.
Love, Jane

Looking through her notes and writings, I was struck by how deeply she appreciated life’s simple joys. Her gratitude wasn’t for grand gestures but for everyday moments: her children and grandchildren (she adored their bare feet and the back of their necks), the scent of her oil paints, a phone call from a friend, salmon sandwiches. Even the ability to travel on the TTC she mentions, inside plumbing - that made me laugh, or the safety of my brother serving in Kosovo, filled her with gratitude.

The forward of the book beautifully encapsulates the heart of gratitude: 
"Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want."
– Margaret Young

As I closed the book, feeling incredibly thankful for my mother and the gifts she shared, a scrap of paper slipped out. In her handwriting, it contained her favorite prayer:

Dear God, who has given me so much,
Give me one thing more, I pray,
A grateful heart.
Not grateful when it pleases me,
But such a heart that every pulse may sing with Thy praise.

I appreciate you and your family and am grateful that you chose our community to dance and find joy through the arts. I hope this month you will find the simplest of pleasures to be grateful for and find a song in your heart and a dance in your feet.

With a grateful heart,
​Jane

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​Artistic Director