I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
GK Chesterton
Both Western and Eastern religious traditions emphasize a number of related virtues such as gratitude, humility, and patience.
In many Christian denominations, the most important rite is the Holy Communion or Eucharist—a word which derives from eucharistia, Greek for ‘thanksgiving’. Martin Luther himself spoke of gratitude as ‘the basic Christian attitude’. Still today, many Christians express praise and gratitude several times a day in their prayers, as do, of course, Muslims and people of other faiths.
Gratitude never came easily to us men and women, and is a vanishing virtue in modern times. In our consumerist society, we tend to focus on what we lack, or on what other people have that we do not, whereas gratitude is the feeling of appreciation for all that we already have. More than that, it is the recognition that the good in our life can come from something that is beyond us and beyond our control—be it other people, nature, or a higher power—and that owes little or nothing to us.
Laughter is wise, because it broadens our perspectives, but gratitude is wiser still, because it broadens our perspectives beyond ourselves. In paying homage to something outside ourselves, gratitude enables us to connect with something that is not only larger than ourselves but also benevolent, even nurturing. By turning us outward, it opens our eyes to the miracle that is life, something to marvel at and revel in rather than ignore or take for granted as it passes us by.
Gratitude encourages us to joy, tranquillity, awareness, enthusiasm, and empathy, while removing us from anxiety, sadness, loneliness, regret, and envy, with which it is fundamentally incompatible. All this it does because it opens us out onto a bigger and better perspective, shifting our focus from what we lack or strive for to all that we already have, to the bounty that surrounds us, and, above all, to life itself, which is the fount of all opportunity and possibility. This eagle-eyed, god-like perspective frees us to live life, no longer for ourselves, but for life itself.
For this reason, the Roman philosopher Cicero called gratitude the greatest of the virtues, and, more than that, the mother of all the other virtues. But you don’t have to take my or Cicero’s word for it. Recent studies have linked gratitude with increased satisfaction, drive, and energy; reduced anxiety, stress, and sadness; and better sleep and overall physical health. Grateful people engage much more profoundly with their environment, leading to greater personal growth and self-acceptance, and stronger feelings of purpose, meaning, and connectedness.
In contrast, ingratitude—which can range from mere lack or absence of gratitude to Brutus’ murder of Cæsar—is ignoble insofar as it ignores the contributions, efforts, and sacrifices of the benefactor, thereby affronting him or her, and, by extension, life itself. The irreligious philosopher David Hume inveighed that, ‘of all the crimes that human creatures are capable of committing, the most horrid and unnatural is ingratitude...’ For the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who we met in Chapter 1, ingratitude is, quite simply, ‘the essence of vileness’.
Ingratitude, which, at least in the West, has become the norm, corrodes social bonds and undermines public trust, leading to societies built on rights and entitlements rather than duties and obligations, on ‘me’ rather than ‘we’, and in which every aspect of human life has to be regulated, recorded, and monitored.
Despite the great and many benefits that it confers, gratitude is hard to cultivate. It opposes itself to some deeply ingrained human traits, in particular, our need to feel in control of our destiny, our propensity to credit ourselves for our successes while blaming others for our shortcomings, and our unconscious belief in some kind of cosmic equality or justice that is being violated by the relative advantages of others. Today, we seek ever more to exist as independent agents rather than as a social collective, and gratitude undermines our sense of separateness, autonomy, and self-efficacy.
As human nature does not leave much place for it, gratitude is an attainment of maturity, or, to be more precise, emotional maturity, which can arrive at any age or, more commonly, not at all. Children who are taught to parrot ‘thank you’ mean it even less than their parents do. Even as adults, many people express gratitude, or a semblance of it, simply because doing so is useful or the ‘done thing’. Gratitude is good manners, and good manners aim at aping profundity when profundity is lacking.
Genuine gratitude, on the other hand, is a rare and accomplished virtue. There is a fable in Æsop about a slave who extracts a thorn from the paw of a lion. Some years later, the slave and the lion are captured, and the slave is thrown to the lion. The starved lion bounds and roars towards the slave, but upon recognizing his friend fawns upon him and licks his face like a lapdog.
‘Gratitude’ concludes Æsop, ‘is the sign of a noble soul’.
Like all virtues, gratitude requires constant cultivation, until such a day as we can say:
‘Thank you for nothing!’
7 ways to be more grateful
1. Make more time for meditation or simple idleness. People who never stop tend to lose sight of the bigger picture. Finding time to stop and breathe and contemplate enables you to reframe things and regain perspective.
2. Practice shifting your focus from what you lack to all that you already have. Artists such as MC Escher teach us that what we regard as foreground and background is, to a large extent, a matter of choice and habit. See, for example, this striking lithograph.
3. Think back to some of the harder times in your life and compare them to your current situation. And ask yourself, ‘In what ways have I changed compared to who I was then?’
4. Think of some of the people who are less fortunate than you are. Even better, volunteer to work or spend time with a few of these people.
5. Incorporate gratitude into your daily routine. For example, say a thankful phrase before your main meal of the day. Make this into a habit, even when you’re eating alone. If anything, your food will taste better. And then, have grateful thoughts each night as your head hits the pillow. This should also help you to relax and fall asleep, and to sleep more soundly (Chapter 2).
6. Make a habit of thanking everyone for everything. When the time came for me to leave Japan (a virtually crime-free country), I arrived very early at the airport. When the check-in for my flight opened, precisely three hours before scheduled take-off, the staff lined up in front of their desks, pressed their hands together, closed their eyes, and bowed in unison at the gathering crowd of passengers—at which point I almost shed a tear. OK, I did. When I got back to England, having picked up the habit, I kept on nodding and bowing at everyone, which made me very popular while it lasted.
7. Remember to be grateful even for the small things, indeed, especially for the small things, the things that we tend to take for granted, like being warm and safe, or even just being alive in this world.
Notes
GK Chesteron (1917), A Short History of England, Ch. 6. 'I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.'
Cicero, Oratio pro Cn. Plancio, 80.
McCullough ME et al. (2002): The grateful disposition: A conceptual and empirical topography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82:112-127.
Wood AM et al. (2009): Gratitude predicts psychological well-being above the Big Five facets. Personality and Individual Differences 45:655-660.
Wood AM et al. (2007): Coping style as a psychological resource of grateful people. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 26:1108-1125.
D Hume (1738), A Treatise of Human Nature, III-I.
I Kant, Lectures on Ethics. Cambridge University Press (2001).
Æsop, Fables, The Slave and the Lion.
The Secret to Everything
How to live more and suffer less
Neel Burton
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