'After all I've done for you!
You should be grateful,' the world tells us. But it is hard to be grateful when
things go wrong all the time, when our hopes are disappointed, when people and
events fall short of our expectations or cause us grief. Even when we tolerate
people in general - because they are there and we
can't do much about it, like the ones in the queue in front of you or in the
traffic jam, or the ones that fill the supermarket or the holiday destination
that you would have liked to enjoy in private - we are not often grateful that they are there at all.
It is easier to muster up a
little gratitude for advantages you enjoy, when you compare yourself with
people who do not have them. Comparative gratitude is of the 'There but for the
grace of God go I' mentality, or 'I can't complain (though I should like to),
because (I am glad to say) other people have it (even) worse.' In fact, 'Can't
complain' is how the English express positive enthusiasm.
So if you were to take a piece of paper and write
down what you have to be grateful for - I hope you will take the time to
actually do this, for reasons that will become apparent - the list might begin
with physical comforts and personal gratifications, such as having a roof over
your head, or your equivalent of the villa in Spain I mentioned in a previous post.
Often these items represent a source of comfort or at least a reprieve from
pain, worry, existential terror. We can be fervently grateful, if not exactly
that there are so many people out there suffering unspeakable abuses and
deprivations, but that we are not, for the moment, one of them. This is gratitude
of the guilty mentality: I may not be wholly free of grievances, and if a genie
were to obligingly pop out of the bottle, I could suggest improvements to my lot,
but I do not want to seem ungracious, in case fate turn peevish and withdraw
such privileges as I have.
Then look around you: there may be things you treasure that serve to remind you of the special people and interests that are part
of your personal history and help to make you what you (think you) are. This is
gratitude of the 'How nice to be me' mentality. We are grateful for the kindly
familiar, for the unchallenging, and for whatever recalls our happy moments; or
like a thing of beauty that is a joy forever, brings us happiness every time we
see or think of it.
And now we are getting closer to true appreciation. Never
mind how partial and disgruntled your gratitude may be, every little helps, as
Tesco helpfully would have us keep remembering. Gratitude takes practice - you need to develop your weakened ability to
be grateful - for we are so full of fear that we forget to remember how much there is to love. Defensiveness blinds us to
the joy that is always quietly hovering in the wings, just waiting to be called into
view. You cannot love what you do not
appreciate, for fear makes appreciation impossible (T6 I 17)
The more you look at, search your mind for, pay
attention to and dwell upon anything and anyone with appreciation - when you
acknowledge receipt, as it were, of an unexpected parcel of happiness - you
discover that gratitude cannot be demanded, or owed.
It is a gift, not from you to someone else, but from you to yourself. Or
rather, from your Self to your Self. When your heart and mind fill with
gratitude, the more complete you become, overflowing your own
boundaries, washing away your petty dissatisfactions in a rising tide of thankfulness.
True gratitude is indistinguishable from unconditional love. You feel loved and
loving in equal measure, because they are the same.
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