What's Wrong with Gratitude

I don't know about yours, but with the advent of Thanksgiving my Facebook news feed turned saccharine. Everyone suddenly experienced a burst of gratitude for their families and friends, their comforts in life, their health, their spiritual practices, their work, and their confidence in a bright future. Thank goodness it's but a one-day holiday closely followed, if not eclipsed, by Black Friday, when grateful people can descend en masse on department stores to slug it out with each other over the right to be the even more grateful owners of brand new big screen TVs, because I don't know how much more of the sickeningly sweet gratitude I could have taken!

Gratitude is in vogue these days. We're exhorted to keep gratitude journals, count our blessings, and focus on the positive. Some believe that the objects of their thoughts and energy grow and multiply, and so spew forth affirmations of gratitude like lava from a volcano, thereby putting the universe on notice that with thanks duly rendered even greater good and bigger gimmes now are past due.

There's an elephant in the room with all this gratitude. Its name is Narcissism, and its language, simply put, is nothing more than the wolf of old-fashioned boasting clad in sheep's clothing of appreciative verbiage. Tedious at best, this big old elephant expends its energy trumpeting about its good life, leaving the rest of us bored while the actual I.O.U. due from the elephant to the universe remains outstanding.

True gratitude is awestruck. Overwhelmed by the magnitude and/or timing and/or convergence of forces for good, true gratitude stands still and small in the face of bounty. And when true gratitude begins to feel its power, that feeling emerges as a call to service. The truly grateful respond to that call, and are much too busy, too enthusiastic, and too outwardly focused in their efforts to deal with, much less become, elephants.

"I am so grateful that my days of roadside breakdowns are over, and for the people at MegaMotors who will deliver my new Porsche tomorrow," or "I thank God for guiding me to the perfect house and for helping me negotiate to buy it for only $3 million," or "I'm filled with gratitude to be the owner of a thriving, successful business that dramatically surpasses growth projections every month" all are clarion calls of the elephant. The elephant in the room indeed would have us believe that as long as it's expressed in the language of gratitude, it's ok to say, "I have have arrived in the world, and in a new Porsche!," or "I'm so well off that I just bought a multi-million dollar home!," or "I'm such a huge success that I exceed even my own expectations every month!"

The elephant, I'm afraid, is not well. Even if its proclamations are modest (a gift or compliment received, a nice vacation), when the elephant trumpets, "Look at how good I have it!" one must suspect that such noise masks underlying, unmet need. There is no shame in needs; everyone has them. But it is sad when genuine need is tamped down and hidden instead of guided gently to the light where it can be met and transformed.

Decades of work in human services, and even longer living in a human body, have taught me that growth cannot be forced or hurried. There first must be willingness to consider that there might be another, better way, and then courage to reach out, to tell the truth, and to try something new, whether it is a new oven cleaner or giving up crack cocaine.

An old friend called early one morning not long ago, waking me up. "Hey, how're ya doin'?" I asked, attempting a cheerfulness to mask both my grogginess and my concern that a call at that hour portended something amiss.

"I'm grateful!" he responded. "My business is doing great. I have a nice home, a wonderful dog, great friends, and good health. How could it be any better?"

Doubting that many people awaken a friend to explain how grateful they are for their perfect lives, I suspect there is an answer to his question, rhetorical though it may have been intended to sound.

While true gratitude need not hide its face, it is not boastful or showy. It finds expression in a combination of humility and service, it tends to be quiet, and it unleashes powerful forces for good. It is the antithesis of cheap thanks, which is focused on the self and expressed as thinly veiled bragging. Cheap thanks tends to be manipulative and deceptive of self and others, and it deprives everyone of the fruits of the full creative potential generously bestowed by a benevolent universe. It is cheap thanks that is

What's Wrong with Gratitude