The unexpected problems of gratitude
The other day I came across an article which recommends gratitude as an approach to improving one’s resilience and mental-wellbeing. The writer informs us that scientists have discovered gratitude is related to a happy hormone called oxytocin and thus “gratitude is shown to promote happiness.” To assist the reader, the writer proceeds with five tips for us to cultivate the practice of gratitude in our everyday life.
The article exemplifies an error that is so common to the modern mind. To be clear, I have no doubt that gratitude promotes oxytocin. In fact, there are quite a few things that promote oxytocin, one of which is breastfeeding. However, I hope that no well-meaning psychologist has recommended breastfeeding for its oxytocin-promoting virtues. The error of seeing gratitude for improving our mental well-being is not of how, but of why. It is the confusion of well-intentionally turning a means into an end by focusing it inwards to the psychological self. For gratitude, by its very essence, direct us beyond ourselves and to another that deserves our undivided attention. To use it as a means to our happiness is to turn it within and therefore back-to-front. I don’t know if practising gratitude for happiness is good psychology, but I do know it is bad philosophy.
Nevertheless, if gratitude is taken up with sincerity, not as an instrument of self-help, but to express a genuine appreciation to whose who deserve them from us, it is indeed one of the acts which is a fountain of life. And when we consider how to do this earnestly, we realise at once that it is no easy task. The common talk of gratitude tells us that it is accessible, and we can be grateful for all the little things - the summer tree, the fragrant coffee, and the awe of the starry nights, etc. Indeed we can, and should, give hearty thanks for these good gifts, but to stop here is to cut ourselves short. If we pause to tabulate all the things that deserve our gratitude, we must remark how little we know of them and how they came into our possession. They are akin to what the astrophysicists call “dark matter” - no one can see them, but we are certain there must be a lot of it because the rest of the universe does not make sense otherwise.
The workplace offers an apt example of what I mean. One of the interesting phenomena at work is how outcomes are consistently mis-credited, or missed-credited. Daily I see critical work which no one knows about, whether they be hard grind in the background or a quiet word from a leader to resolve a tension. Even when the team celebrates a successful project, these will never come to the light. Gratitude, even in a place where recognising credit is fundamental to the prosperity of the organisation, is not all obvious.
Why is it so hard to be thoughtfully grateful? One reason must be that the people who truly deserve our gratitude prefer to keep their deeds quiet. An audio-visual technician once told me “The best AV set up is an invisible one. People only notice the AV if there’s something wrong.” Indeed, a favourite topic at work while we wait for the meeting to start is to disparage the defective teleconference system in the meeting room. On the other hand, I have yet to hear someone deliver any speech in praise of a teleconference system when it functions.
What is true of sound systems is even more true of people. I still recall myself sitting at the front of the high school class with my friend. The two of us would openly ignore the head teacher’s class. Instead, we read our own books or to pursue some other subjects which took our fancy. Only as an adult, I realised that the teacher did not “tolerate our rebellion,” as I supposed, but was making space for us to foster our passion for learning. How can I show gratitude to this teacher years hence, whose name I do not even remember, I would never know. Gratitude is hardest when it is most deserved. The very people to whom we owe the most, our parents, teachers, great leaders, prefer to be forgotten so that we ourselves might be remembered. Earnest gratitude requires us to have, if not omniscience, then at least an attentive eye to see what is not easy to see, at an age when we are not ready to see it.
If we are to be grateful for receiving the good, even more should we be grateful to those who laboured to keep us from evil. Any parent will tell you that their constant anxiety is to keep their children safe from harm. How much of these efforts do children really know? Even among adults I have not met someone who sees with clarity all the evils from which they were delivered by the thoughtful act of somebody else. Consider the traffic light - that magical invention that quietly guards us as does a gentle mother. Have we not all muttered curses of frustration when they are stopped by a red light on a busy day? Seldom have I seen someone thank a green one. Surely if we were to make any commentaries on a traffic light at all, we would thank it for being red as much as it being green. Instead, the traffic light frustrates us precisely at the point when it is deserving of our thanks. Alas, every moment we are unconscious of being delivered from disasters that would surely have been ours if it were not for the accumulated efforts of many. Even a cursory familiarity with history will reveal that we are daily kept safe from a myriad evils that beset our ancestors. Let the one who says they will practice gratitude thank the makers of traffic lights in all its colours, and especially for being red.
Proper gratitude, and not mere good feelings, requires that we discern good and evil, trace cause and effect, and see clearly what is not easy to see. Gratitude, taken seriously, is a great ethical and analytical task. It is a far cry from the popular talk of gratitude as therapy.
Before I was born, my father smoked. When my mother became pregnant with me, my father gave up the habit to keep us from the cigarette. This was something I learnt years later. Yes, let’s have gratitude. But let’s be earnest in our gratitude. Let’s ponder deeply on the goods that have come our way, visible or invisible, and consider where they come from and how they came our way. We can all be grateful for the joy of the summer sun and the breeze of the autumn wind. But let’s also take time with the elderly parent because he gave up a bad habit for the child’s sake, many decades ago. If we truly know all that we owe to those who nourished us, and notice how late the hour, and how impossible it is to pay them back, our gratitude would lead us not only to an astonished joy, but also to weep tears of repentance.