A Grinchly take on gratitude

Especially at this time of year—I’m writing this as we head to Thanksgiving—you can’t get away from gratitude: It’s touted in religion, psychology, music, workout videos, commercials, on and on…the hype is enough to make a critical curmudgeon, such as myself, skeptical of the whole idea.

For one thing, “gratitude” tends to get thrown in with “resilience,” and I’m a grouch about “resilience.” Why? Because as the term is often used, it hands responsibility for surviving bad things onto the person getting dumped on. You’re going hungry? Here’s how resilience helps you cope! You’re growing up with an abusive parent? Try these practices! OK, I’m exaggerating. But notice that typical articles on resilience, such as this and this, don’t talk about confronting the source of the problem, just about building up your own capacity to deal with it, as if whatever it is were inevitable. If gratitude is like that—groveling for crumbs from the powers that be—who wants it?

With a skeptical eye like this, I’d be joining some analytic philosophers who critique the concept on other grounds, gradually narrowing gratitude’s terrain in various ways. For example, they try to figure out what gratitude is, in essence—an emotion? A virtue? A “reactive attitude”? If it’s one or the other of these, we only really display gratitude if we have the right emotion or virtue or attitude. Or they try to figure out when or whether we owe gratitude. For example, a narrow position is that we only owe gratitude when a human has performed a specific, intentional action to benefit us—leaving out any need to be grateful for benefits from our pets, nature, the universe, God, institutions, or people who unintentionally benefit us.

Gratitude convert

My knee-jerk grouchiness explains why I’m a very recent convert, despite for years having had a general sense of gratitude toward the amazing blessings in my life—our beautiful children and grandchildren (so grateful!!), so many other wonderful people, luck to have avoided war and other disasters, music, the natural world, my own array of talents and health, etc., etc. And remembering occasionally to say this out loud, to people or in prayer.  

But I’ve turned a corner. After all, what other response is possible when your daughter and granddaughter survive a terrifying birth experience? And (I’m now thinking) what other response is seemly for even the simple things in life: a beautiful day, something good to eat, talking with a friend? 

In fact, a promiscuous sense of gratitude has a lot to recommend it. Despite the hair-splitting philosophers, why not feel gratitude even if you don’t know the source of your good fortune? Why not call it gratitude, whether it’s a fleeting feeling; a practice of prayer, or writing, or mantras, or thank-you letters; or a virtue that you cultivate, honing your abilities? Why not think of gratitude in neurological terms, as a release of dopamine and serotonin that enhances your feeling of well-being?

A (non-exhaustive) couple of answers might be: Why not? Because “gratitude” is so ill-defined, who knows what practice or virtue or emotion is recommended? Why not? Because your gratitude might not be appropriately directed: You thank God, but really it was raw luck that brought you the benefit. You thank your doctors for saving your life, but really they were just covering up their mistakes. Why not? Because whoever gave you the benefit  really just wants to manipulate you. Why not? Because it was just luck, or you deserved it, or someone or something owed you. 

OK. But there are lot more reasons to let gratitude overflow, even if it’s sometimes misdirected. For one thing, when you express your gratitude toward a human benefactor—maybe some pets, too—your thanks acknowledges their effort, which encourages more effort. You might be the beneficiary of that effort, or someone else might be—in either case, your gratitude encourages more good in the world. Similarly, your gratitude to someone might inspire a third party’s positive attitudes or actions. Listen to how our daughter Lucy’s recent Facebook post shifts from explaining the trauma of her birth story, to gratitude toward her medical team, to nudging her readers toward such excellent care:

“It was strange and traumatic to be conscious and aware of everything as it was happening. I asked my OB at one point, who was standing at my bedside, “am I dying?” She looked afraid as she watched my vital signs dip and responded, “it’s serious.” When [husband] Jay asked if I was going to be ok, she responded, “she’s bleeding out.”

After lifesaving interventions, I ended up in the ICU for a couple of nights while Jay took care of our daughter in the postpartum unit. The amazing nurses helped him be a single parent. We’re forever grateful for their care, compassion and guidance those first few days.

 I’m sharing this for a couple of reasons. First, I am beyond thankful we purposely chose to be at Abbott Northwestern for delivery. My pregnancy was relatively easy, no complications and no indication that delivery would be risky. Still, you never know. I wanted to be somewhere that could handle an emergency for me and had a high acuity NICU in case baby needed extra care. While I hope no one experiences what I did, I am an example of things going unexpectedly wrong. I urge any woman to consider how they’ll receive medical care during childbirth.”

Catching gratitude

In addition to inspiring positive action, gratitude is contagious. One person’s gratitude, expressed, can remind others of the blessings in their own lives. And—what’s more!—that snowballing recognition, positive psychologists tell us, can greatly benefit the grateful individual: Gratitude reduces stress, anxiety, depression, and pain; and it improves emotional resilience, immunity, and sleep. At the very least, then, gratitude is useful. 

Some people can focus on blessings in their lives even when other things are going badly for them. But for a lot of us, it’s hard to muster gratitude during dark periods of illness, death, broken relationships, bad luck, or confronting horrendous evils. As I’ve said, I’m no expert, so I don’t have advice about how to turn that corner. I do have one thought about what makes mustering gratitude worth doing even in hard times: It’s the same thing that makes gratitude different from pop-psychology resilience.  Unlike “resilience,” which throws responsibility for well-being onto individuals, gratitude is not individualistic. In fact, quite the opposite: Gratitude looks outside yourself and acknowledges that you are part of a web of human and non-human relationships and circumstances, many of which you don’t control, and some of which benefit you. Recognizing your own place in that web—sometimes as a loser, it’s true, but sometimes as a winner and always a contributor—situates others’ contributions to you and yours to them, putting you in a position to thank, encourage, and pass it on. That, to me, is the best reason I’ve found for being grateful.