the practice of gratitude
/To hear Brandi read this essay instead, click here: https://youtu.be/OhH2LQ6k16s
Halloween hangovers have made my children entitled little trainwrecks. From what I can tell, they expect to be given special candy and treats every day. Woke up? Here’s a full size Snickers’ bar! Walked out of school on Tuesday? Candied apple for ya. Wearing clothes? Of course I’ll make you some Puppy Chow!
In this “Treat-for-breathing” framework, it is easy to feel abused when you don’t get every possible thing you demand. Granted, my kids are entitled to a whole lot anyway, but it seems October through December are designed to make them demand more and thank less. Watching it all unfold, I realize that feeling disappointed is not always inspired by neglect or hardship. I—and they—can feel victimized even as they enjoy a lot of attention, with very few unmet needs.
The combination of entitlement and victimization produces the worst kind of person in a shared community. I have been that person, so I’m speaking from experience. When a coworker gets the best assignments, and still complains the most…terrible. When a kid has eaten out for the last few days and then complains about dinner at home…frustrating. When I have the chance to see a friend and then complain if the house is a mess when I return, my husband is rightly short on compassion. We have all been around folks who seem to have everything except situational awareness toward the lives of others. I am that way sometimes. I feel slighted or give in to defensive outrage at the slightest feeling of being doubted or overlooked. Even in a context where my needs are usually centered and nearly always met—to the detriment of dismissed others—I can be consumed by ingratitude.
Ann Voss Camp, and the Bible, talk a lot about gratitude as the root of much goodness. The practice of thanks might not come naturally; indeed, Thanksgiving is a practice we develop over time. Some are born seemingly contented in all situations, but all of us can learn the skill of seeking gratitude. As we enter a season of Thanksgiving in 2021, it is worth remembering that gratitude is not only a responsive impulse. It can be an initiating one.
Rather than passively experiencing gratitude when someone else is kind or attends to me, I’ve begun trying to practice thankfulness as an originating posture. What would my day at work look like if entered rooms having called up gratitude first? How would my family experience me differently if I learned to teach my senses to observe all the good that surrounds their rougher spots? How would my sense of belonging in community grow if I habitually acknowledged the sustaining loving kindness of so many Nashvillians?
Gratitude is pretty magical when it wells up and spills onto another person who does a nice thing. A foundational perspective of thanks can transform your entire life, though. It will seep into your everything until your instincts see good more than bad. Your kindness and dignity will spill onto others instead of making them earn it first. Your generosity will flow liberally in most contexts, because you are convinced of your abundance.
As we think about all the ways our non-profits, schools and NGOs make taking care of others easy for us in the holiday season, our challenge is to engage in that work from a place of gratitude. The best social scientists and community leaders teach us to view each community with a focus on the strengths therein, not the deficits. When we enter a “needy” community as the “strong, providing ones,” we carry an unspoken expectation of seeing and hearing their gratitude. In the process, we negate access to our own sense of gratitude, of wonder, even of need. Instead, if you get the chance to interact with people who need your resources, enter that space oozing gratitude for the belonging and dignity you are usually granted. Go in that neighborhood utterly convinced that they have resources you don’t recognize, that they have lived many years and many stories, and “recipient of aid” is not their primary identity.
Allow your originating stance of gratitude to lead you to expect an encounter that will fill a need in you, even as you spend time caring for another human being. Be grateful.
Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to pause and try on gratitude-as-an-organizing-posture for a day or three. It’s baked into the pies. It is available to us all year long though. Gratitude isn’t only a reaction, it is also a posture that produces more kindness, more generosity, more connection, more wonder, in you.
