The Issue of Gratitude

I’ve been thinking about the idea of gratitude a lot lately—and my complicated feelings about the concept. The science that supports its practice for mental health is manifold, certainly, and I feel awash in it frequently. I try to cultivate it whenever possible. But I wonder if its not a misnomer, or if we haven’t appropriated the word and applied it in ways in which it was never intended. To me, gratitude feels akin to wonder and awe—the sense of being connected to something much larger than myself, a joy of communion. Not necessarily a mechanism for expressing thanks.

As a parent, there’s a fair amount of pressure to ensure that your kids express gratitude—an acknowledgment of how lucky they are to have what they have (including, of course, how lucky they are to have you as their parents). I felt this pressure as a child: “Do you know how lucky you are to have this home-cooked dinner—there are starving children in the world?” “Do you realize how lucky you are to be on this vacation—do you know how many kids would kill for this trip?” This isn’t necessarily the wrong impulse. I don’t want to raise spoiled assholes either, or entitled brats. But kids are kids: An essential part of growing up, of life in general, is coming into an understanding of yourself within a much wider context, not being told how you should feel. I don’t know that we can, or should, shortcut our kids to this understanding, particularly when there’s still so much inequity in our world. Is it not more powerful, more animating, more activating, for them to arrive at this conclusion themselves? I’m not sure that burdening them with guilt about a life that they did not choose is the right way to ensure that they lean into engaging with the world to make it better for others. I want them to be good citizens born out of revelation rather than duty; I want them to be good citizens out of feeling connected rather by trying to erase feelings of shame that they got an unfairly positive shake in the life lottery.

Being a parent is a choice (or, it should be) and it is an act of service. There can only be giving, with no expectation of reciprocity—that’s the definition of unconditional love. I can never repay my parents for my life, or the opportunities that they afforded me. There’s nothing I can or should do to make them feel like it was “worth it” to raise me. It can never be a quid-pro-quo relationship; there’s no perfect balance between parents and children, no way to equal or cancel out effort or love. I think we often get this wrong in our culture. I think we get this wrong when we command gratitude from our children, when we establish a system in which they “owe us” something…even if that something is only recognition.

Gratitude isn’t checks and balances, it isn’t debts paid. It’s a burden unless its freely given, as the purest expression of the soul. Of course I’m grateful for my parents, and for their continued existence on the planet; I’m grateful for my childhood, for my brother’s company, for the wild woods in which I roamed. But I’m not sure that what I thought was appropriate gratitude as a child—thank you for this, thank you for that—was felt at all. I think it was a performance, because I didn’t really understand.

I’m most grateful for my own children, though, and not because of their filial duty and obedience, or their good manners or good grades. I’m grateful for their presence, their essential natures, their unencumbered joy. I would like them to keep that for as long as possible, that lack of self-consciousness, the distance from guilt and shame. The world will deliver the latter them to spades over time, I feel no need to compound the wound or rub their faces in it. Playing this long-game will require patience; it means I must resist more immediate gratification (literally). But I’m hoping for good citizens born out of an innate desire to give, not demanded out of obedience. Only time will tell.

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