Enjoy Some Gratitude

Happy summer, everyone.

As we in the United States explore the many feelings of pandemic transition – delight, awkwardness, anxiety, and everywhere in between – I want to make a plug: Enjoy some gratitude!

I say this not because being grateful is virtuous and something you ought to do, but because gratitude feels great and now is a great time to cultivate it.  Here are a few words about when, why, and how.

1. When?

This month is one of the best times for spontaneous gratitude in, like, ever.  I’ve felt gratitude on the streets of New York, growing more crowded with people living their lives once again.  I’ve felt it at birthday parties and film premieres.  I definitely felt it when my daughter hugged her grandmother.

And there are plenty of people to feel grateful toward: scientists, nurses, parents, doctors, teachers, wise policymakers (they do exist!), volunteers, grocery store workers, the list goes on and on.  It is absolutely amazing that COVID vaccines have been safely developed and administered to over two billion people.  It’s amazing that people have done so much over the past year. We flattened the curve, we stopped the spread, we sacrificed, and many of us, of course, lost more than we can comprehend.  We’ve seen grief, resilience, heroes, villains, altruism, selfishness – and now many of us are blessed to see opening, joy, and reconnection.

But wait a minute.  Of course, all is not well.  Tragedies are unfolding in other countries, and will likely occur in less-vaccinated areas here as well.  Structural inequities remain, tracking lines of race and class.  You yourself may be reckoning with grief, or trauma, or continued suffering. Is now perhaps not a time for gratitude after all?

Actually, I think now is the perfect time for a more mature gratitude, one that doesn’t pretend that everything is fantastic – because it never is – but which recognizes the good fortune many of us are enjoying, while at the same time being mindful of the challenges that remain.  Holding both of these truths is the essence of equanimity.

2. Why?

Despite plenty of reasons to be grateful, gratitude doesn’t come naturally for many of us – probably most of us. As Happier has explored with leading scientists and teachers, human beings have a built-in negativity bias: it’s evolutionarily advantageous to accentuate the negative rather than the positive, and that’s what we all do. After all, if you think that rustling in the grass is a snake, you’re going to be wrong 95% of the time, but that 5% will save your life.

Negativity bias also helps us go about our lives. If at every moment, we were grateful for the miracle of being alive and marveling at everyday miracles, we wouldn’t do what’s needed to protect or sustain ourselves.  And eventually, we’d get eaten by a mammoth.

But as evolutionarily adaptive as non-gratitude is, it can lead to some unfortunate results.  Like taking good things for granted or worrying excessively about possible bad futures.  Or becoming jealous, angry, judgmental, or defensive.  Our negativity bias distorts what’s true and leads to suffering.

That’s why gratitude is a skill.  Like hope, happiness, and resilience, it takes some cultivation.  To paraphrase the Beatles, the gratitude you take will be equal to the gratitude you make.

3. How?

So how do you do it?

In ordinary life, it’s easy enough.  When you reflect for a moment on things you feel grateful for, whether pandemic-related or otherwise, that alone will offset some of your wired-in negativity bias.  You might even smile.

But in meditation, it gets juicier.  With the mind a bit quieter, you can focus on something or someone for which you feel grateful, and place that feeling of gratitude at the center of your attention.

Then, you might explore what gratitude feels like in the body: perhaps a lightness in the chest, or even a flutter in the heart that feels a bit like love.  It can be a lovely, embodied experience, which is usually quite pleasant.

Then, you can go deeper.  For example, you can notice how it’s hard to stay with the present-moment experience of gratitude, rather than go off into the details of discursive thought (Pfizer or Moderna?  And what about my kids?).  See if you can accept that tendency with a little self-compassion, and even humor, and then come back to the gratitude.

You could even explore, in your own experience, how gratitude for good things can coexist with concern and compassion for bad things, as I mentioned above.  Try not to get too lost in the “story” of what’s happening, instead staying the present-moment experience of concern or compassion right alongside the experience of gratitude.  What does it feel like to simultaneously hold joy and gratitude on the one hand, and compassion and concern on the other?  Check that out for yourself.

What might arise, depending on your own perspective and circumstances, is something like equanimity.  Here’s gratitude, and here’s compassion for suffering, including perhaps your own. Here’s the existence of both truths, in a kind of balance.  A spacious mind can accommodate both realities.

Stop and smell the roses, for much of the world is opening up like a flower.  Don’t miss this moment, this profound opportunity for joy.