It’s been a long time since I have posted here. Weird. I’ve been writing. I’ve been writing a lot. Usually just for me, sometimes to share with an audience. A couple of years ago I shared a talk on gratitude. It was popular, I gave this talk a dozen times. But then I retired it. I get bored with myself easily and I was way beyond bored with this. But rather than delete it forever, maybe parking it here would be worthwhile.
A couple of years ago I joined a group who shared our daily gratitude. At that difficult time it seemed like a good idea to be reminded of how much we had to be grateful for. These friends continue to share their thanks often for fundamental things – their health, family, friends, perhaps that they have a roof over their head and food on their table.
There is good science that supports a daily practice of gratitude; strong evidence that a practice of daily gratitude increases your happiness, improves your quality of sleep, even lowers blood pressure. Measurable results. So yes, be grateful I love my friends, but honestly, somedays their gratitude seems so small.
They’re grateful for coffee. Aren’t we all, but is that that the best we can do? The sunset. Gorgeous, yes be grateful for it. That is certainly part of the point of a gratitude practice, to remember some small bright light at the end of a dark day. But rather than reach for the obvious couldn’t we, sometimes, dig deeper? Isn’t that also the point? Especially when our days are not so dark Brene Brown has said “What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude.” But I think that gratitude is deeper than simple appreciation. So let’ us’ dig in a little deeper to how our gratitude intersects and interconnects.
Health is always on someone’s list. So much of our overall life satisfaction relies on even the slightest improvement to our health. Absolutely, appreciate your health. And then what? In part, maybe being grateful for health is also being grateful for the decent insurance coverage that your job provides. Dig deeper and you might be grateful that your parents could adequately nourish you as a child so you didn’t develop life long maladies. Keep digging and find gratitude for who your parents’ parents were, what they looked like, where they came from that allowed them to pass on the ability to feed the kids. Keep digging. If you look like me odds are that you grew up where the air was a lot cleaner than the neighborhoods where our black and brown friends lived. Be grateful.
Many of us are grateful for family… people who love you even when they don’t like you… the continuity, connection of that love. Be grateful, and then what? Dig deeper, to see that perhaps your family wasn’t torn apart when one parent had to leave to find work. I wasn’t sent away for safety, were you? Generations of my family weren’t intentionally separated to stop the spread of language, culture, and history that binds us together. Be grateful.
We are grateful for the roof over our heads and the food in our bellies. But let us acknowledge that the roof covers air conditioned space and the food in my belly is way beyond sustenance, it’s usually delicious and comforting. There is nothing at all wrong with that. Don’t feel guilty about that. I am grateful for the comfort and excess I have and I am grateful for any you have because I like you and I want you to be happy. Be grateful. And then what? I dig a little deeper see that my success is a product of my education and I am thankful that I grew up in a household where the luxury of an education was a reality. My dad, didn’t finish high school, he didn’t even start it. He went to work. Eventually he joined the army, then got a job, went to college. So I grew up fairly comfortably. Be grateful for your parents but, don’t stop there, dig deeper.
I know that the GI bill which helped my dad was not given out fairly. He got a boost that men of color did not. My roof and the food in my pantry are a direct result of that. I am grateful. So when it comes down to it, some of my friends and I, and maybe some of you, are grateful for generations of advantages We are who we are. We have what we have. Please be grateful. But then what? To begin with, please be happy, it’s a benefit of gratitude. Get a better night’s sleep courtesy of your gratitude. Your blood pressure is lower because of your gratitude. And then what?
I find it interesting that two men who were ideological opposites came up with these very similar sentences: Leo Tolstoy wrote “I sit on a man’s back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible… except by getting off his back” Decades later, Dwight Eisenhower said “A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”
Please know that guilt has no place in gratitude. You have what you have. Be grateful. You should not have less. Should you? I don’t know. There are a few areas in which I should have less. But that’s me. Personally. We all should embrace what we need to feel fulfilled, safe, happy, secure, valued. It isn’t one size fits all. But too often, in the way our world is organized, the fulfillment of some comes at the expense of others. Does it have to be that way? I hope we actively look for the line between gratitude and greed, need and want, us and them.
Too often we are led to believe that we need to be on top, better than. And here is where real gratitude pays off. Material gain gets you some happiness and well-being. To a point. We get used to things being rewarding & pleasurable – take the good for granted It takes more and more to get us there. Conscious gratitude helps balance that. True gratitude is rooted in humility. In a survey of olympic medalists, bronze medalists were happier than silver medalists. What? Yes, really The bronze winners were grateful because they almost didn’t get a medal. Silver medalists had a measure of disappointment for not getting gold. Standing at the cusp of the haves and have nots, the bronze medalist is much more aware of all the athletes in their interconnected web. They see just how lucky they are. Luck, privilege, mystery of the universe – we simply did not earn all that we have and our gratitude should acknowledge that.
When we combine our gratitude with humility we find that our health is a little dependent on our behavior and a lot on the luck in our stars. Doesn’t every kid deserve nutritious food? Doesn’t every kid deserve lead-free water out of the tap at home? Doesn’t every kid deserve to breathe clean air? But we know that poor kids live in food deserts. We know that lead pipes don’t get replaced in all neighborhoods, and that statistically people of color more likely to live near polluting industries. Those problems are huge and the solutions are complex. But we can at least dig in and acknowledge the inequity of the system that gives some of us so much to be grateful for.
We dive into the deep end of our gratitude for family and see that we were allowed to maintain connections through generations. No one erased our heritage. These issues run deep, but we can acknowledge their continuing effects. We can do that while being grateful. We take a harder look at gratitude for a home and see that it is easier for some us to get a mortgage because we look like the bankers. Institutional change is a long road. But we can recognize that the overarching economy is built on a foundation of inequity. We can do that while being grateful, in fact maybe we can do it more clearly because we are grateful. When we can see those places where our privilege actively bumps up against someone else’s oppression we can see an opportunity for change. But I think we have to look.
JFK said “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” How do we do that? I can’t answer that for you. I can’t fully answer it for myself. I do know that there is no shortage of health or food or shelter or education or happiness. There is enough. We don’t need to horde those things nor do we need to sacrifice the things that truly make us feel safe and happy. Some day soon I want us to be grateful that we helped the next generation, all of the next generation, feel gratitude for their health, their family, a roof over their head and food on their table. I want us to be grateful that we helped the next generation all of the next generation, have the luxury of being grateful for coffee & a sunset.
Can we get there? Yes. Emphatically unquestioningly yes. Do I know how? No. But I am certain it starts with being humbly grateful and digging a little deeper.