I would consider myself a pretty woo-woo, self-help-y sort of gal – not a crystal or mantra I won’t look at twice – but as I grow into all of this world’s wonders and slowly tease apart what’s meaningful to me, I realize there’s one big modern mode of positive thinking that just doesn’t do it for me: gratitude.
You may be thinking, “Oh wow, so you are . . . an ungrateful person?” and this, of course, is not it at all. (Maybe not ‘of course,’ since you do not know me, I shouldn’t put ‘of course’ on you, apologies for being condescending.) I feel, ultimately, quite grateful for my general luck in life: I’ll just say for the record right now that I have never been hungry or without shelter. I have more than I could ever deserve, to the point where sometimes, when I really sit back and look at all that I have, it literally takes my breath away.
But, I think it’s important to home in on the defining characteristic of “grateful” – what it is – to understand why I’m uncomfortable with its rise to the Quick Fix Happiness Actions list (TM). To be grateful is to have a feeling; you feel grateful. And as gratitude practice peaks (hopefully) in popularity, so does the concept of the impermanence of feelings. You hear about this mode of thinking a lot, how it can be helpful to remember when distressed that feelings are mostly temporary, and you won’t feel this way forever. Despite “grateful” being a feeling, it seems as though its inherent temporaneous nature has been set aside for the moment, and we’ve lifted gratitude as a state of being, a consistent way of looking at the world that is Pious and Good.
And that’s a bit rough for me. You can’t be grateful all of the time. That’s fucking nuts. And for people who are, I mean let’s be honest here, are you saving them a seat next to you at a party? To constantly talk about what you’re grateful for is just a big long humblebrag and few are here for that. Feeling grateful, to me, is special because it’s like a zap: It suddenly washes over you as you look at someone who just listened to you cry about your bagel being burnt and didn’t judge you because they knew it was just the last straw at the end of your shitty week. Gratitude is when you find yourself grinning when you overhear a really good joke that a kid tells their friend and damn, you were so lucky to have caught it. What I’m saying is, it isn’t forged or summoned – it’s a recognition.
Now, absolutely, there may be people reading this who say, “That’s the point. When you write down what you’re grateful for every day, you recognize more and more things for which to be grateful.” To that I say, do you? I guess it depends on what a person’s personal definition of gratitude us. Maybe, this is why I’m “meh” about it as a practice. For me, gratitude is often (though not always!) more than simply being glad you had a jelly donut, or relieved that you got to the gas station before you hit empty. There’s a step deeper that involves reverence. A consideration of context, our place in the wider world. It can’t be recognized purely in isolation, in a single individual. Thinking of things that make you happy, or that you’re glad happened is absolutely valuable (I do it constantly), but does it water down the deep, reverent gratitude that overwhelms? Hell, does it even matter?
The truth of the matter is, you take what you want and leave the rest, and if consistently thinking of what you’re grateful for brings you balance, peace, anything at all positive you keep doing it and ‘eff anyone that says you shouldn’t. That is the truth. I’m just working out my own brain thoughts, and it has literally nothing to do with anyone who benefits from doing things I’m simply not into.
I think when it gets to me – when it feels cutting – is the placement of gratitude on others, the creation of a sort of litmus test for others’ level of spirituality compared to your own. “Well, be grateful that . . . ” (vomit). Nobody wants to hear that. Nobody wants to hear, when they’re trying to simply work through the next hour, that they have things to be grateful for. Gratitude work is both blessed and cursed by the fact that anyone can do it, meaning we all have something to be grateful for. Even typing that, I rolled my eyes cuz honestly, I just despise putting that on people – you could very well have nothing to be grateful for because again, it is a temporary feeling and I don’t know what you’re dealing with right now. There’s a notion rising in this world of . . . what? Pop psych? Self-help? Mental health? . . . “toxic positivity” and I for one am relieved this is now a thing. Toxic positivity, in a nutshell, is exactly why I have trouble getting on the gratitude train. Essentially, it asks you to ignore very real, negative, and possibly destructive or damaging feelings by “being positive.”
In treating gratitude as a state of being as opposed to a feeling renders it something you only accomplish if you work hard enough. If you’re not grateful, you’re not trying. I’ve seen some people talk about gratitude as if it makes them incredibly “woke” or something. What I love about the above graphic is how, underneath “healthy acceptance,” the creator listed “deep acting.” Telling someone to be grateful minimizes their current feelings, yes, and renders them as failing in some way (i.e., if it’s hard for you to see what you should be grateful for, what you are feeling is your fault, not due to circumstances) absolutely, but it also forces a state of helplessness. I’m upset; I’m not grateful; I’ll be upset until I see the bright side; until then, just gotta sit here, I guess.
Feelings come and feelings go (la la la la la), and that includes the shittiest ones. But that doesn’t mean they can’t do damage, which is why figuring out how to deal with them is key – not trying to smooth over and ignore them in the name of being grateful. Diving deep into what you’re feeling, what caused it, and what you now know about yourself that can be helpful information in the future is what progresses us. Not vainly trying to manifest a feeling that isn’t actually authentic.
In fact, that’s probably where the grating comes from for me. Somewhere along the line, who knows where, gratitude practice morphed into a form of humblebrag or, very often, a sort of virtue signaling that indicates that you’re aware of your extensive privilege but not suuuppppper into actually taking action to affording others to have the same. Although gratitude begins, from my perspective, only from within (rings meditation bell), it becomes through a recognition of a personal state of being to a reckoning with the world at large. Gratitude, when really worked with, can be the beginning of us taking comfort and joy in the success of others – we see where we are, we’re cognizant of its meaning, and it’s all the more easy to see when other people reach a similar place. The joy spreads.
I saw a tweet thread recently that touches a bit on this idea, that discusses how white progressives’ cynicism at the new senate and president isn’t “enough.” Do we truly have gratitude if we’re seeing others’ relief and casting it aside? Are we genuinely aware, on the deepest level, of how good we have it when others’ joy is met with a lecture about how they’re wrong to feel it? I don’t think so. I don’t know that it isn’t wrong to follow up a recognition of a personal gratitude with a question: “Why me and not them?” or even “Why them and not me”? Why are others so grateful for something and you can’t bring yourself to feel the same way? What brought you to have this thing you understand brings stability, joy, or safety to your life? The interrogation can lead to further action – asking these questions leads us to the understanding of systems and how they emerge. Of white supremacy, of caste, of patriarchy, of – of – of . . . But stopping at “I do not feel gratitude for this” is a refusal to step further into an exercise you may be quite privileged to take.
This brings it back around to the idea that yes, I believe gratitude practice – taking stock of what you are truly grateful for, taking legitimate minutes to sit with that feeling and see what it applies to in your life – can be incredibly helpful and a real way of bringing peace to yourself. And nothing I’ve said is intended to come off as “Gratitude! You’re Doing It Wrong!” But when we simply hear ourselves saying the word all the time, so often in the form of a command (“Be grateful!”) or a stitched pillow or wall hanging from Target, we diminish any actual work that can be wrought from it. “We’ve done enough,” we think. “I have felt of the gratitude, I’m lucky, see, I bought this mug that says it,” and action is gone. Feelings are only useful when paired with activity, even if it’s just the activity of sitting with it and noticing how your body feels.
And maybe that’s where we went off track. Thinking that gratitude is at the top of a mountain we all climb, some are higher than others, and it’s our duty to help those lower than us reach the top of Gratitude Mountain, like it’s one of those levels in Scientology. And we do that not through actual climbing, but “talking” the climb – “Here I am! I’m way up here! Grateful grateful grateful!” without an actual step being taken. Is it so bad though? Telling ourselves things that aren’t true to get through the day? Especially things about ourselves? Eh, maybe not. We’re all liars, I believe this. It’s somethings way too hard to think about the following: Things are going to happen and it doesn’t matter how good you have it. Not one whit. Things will happen to you that you would trade every single thing in that gratitude journal just to reverse a singular happening that feels like it has ruined you. So maybe, yeah, we gotta avoid a little bit to get through the day. Who knows.
What the Hell is On My Face? 