A Truer Kind of Gratitude
We know which things to put on our gratitude lists: our families, friends, good food to eat, a roof over our heads, and our health – the basics. As we fill our gratitude journals, we become more aware of our blessings, big and small, and there is real beauty in being present to the everyday miracles in our lives. Countless scientific studies have measured the effects of practicing gratitude. It turns out that cultivating gratitude is good for our physical and mental health, and might even help us live longer, according to a 2024 Harvard study. Thousands of books tout the benefits of practicing gratitude, and there is no shortage of YouTube videos telling us how to do it right. Do we really need a scientific study, self-help books, and videos to tell us that we’re happier and healthier when we are grateful for the people and things in our lives? Counting our blessings (cliché intended) has become a cliché, especially if driven by a need to control our minds and bodies, or simply as a counterweight to our challenges. Something that was once profound becomes a cliché because it was impactful enough to be widely adopted, but over time, repetition, shortcuts, and commodification watered it down.
Performative gratitude practices, used as prescriptions for positivity and wellness, can also diminish the wholeness of life and paper over imperfections and difficulties when used as a simple antidote to complex emotions. While gratitude can change our perspective and buoy our spirits, it can lead to guilt or feelings of failure if we struggle to feel grateful for anything in that moment.
Authentic gratitude rather than prescriptive gratitude has the power to open the door to joy, but it isn’t about making lists, repeating positive affirmations, or pretending that everything is wonderful – it isn’t an end in itself. It is a way of being. So how do we keep our gratitude from being hollow and not just a means to an end? We ask ourselves questions about the things on our lists. How do they reflect what I value? How do these good things connect me to a larger truth? How do they change me? Once we explore the deeper meanings of the ordinary things on our lists, we weave gratitude into our way of being. For me, the warm coffee my husband makes every morning used to be a simple line on my gratitude list. These days, while I’m recovering from foot surgery and can’t walk to the kitchen, it’s become something else entirely. It smells and tastes like love. Today, I asked myself what that morning coffee meant in a larger context. Personally, it showed me that I am unconditionally loved and not alone. More broadly, it reminded me that love and relationships bring us joy and help us bear our pain. We take in our experiences through our senses, but when we ask ourselves questions about them, we deconstruct and rearrange them in our minds and hearts, and see their imprint in our actions.
Authentic gratitude is about intentionally recognizing the sacred as you encounter it and being ready to receive it, good and bad. It's an expression of humility that recognizes and embraces our interconnectedness and interdependence. We understand that while our particular lives and efforts are valuable, it’s about more than that. We don’t have to close our eyes to the painful parts of life to be grateful, because even in the midst of immense pain, such as the loss of someone we love, we can be thankful for the gift of their lives, the memories we have, those who still travel with us, and the things that are still good. The tears we cry over loss are a testament to the love we feel. Even if one of the things on our list goes away, if we are living from a place of gratitude, we reel and sometimes fall, but we find joy and hope again. As we get used to looking for threads of connection, gratitude becomes a natural state rather than a forced practice, enabling us to welcome the fullness of our real lives wholeheartedly. Gratitude is something to be cultivated and embraced; it isn’t always easy, and we won’t live in a blissful state all of the time. Some days it’s just a mug of coffee. But we can learn to recognize those unearned moments of joy and continue to grow in gratitude.
