Great-full
To date I’ve attempted a number of pieces regarding the topic of gratitude. Over the past decade or so, “gratitude” is the general name given by researchers and clinicians for a therapeutic practice against feelings of ennui and despair. At the most reductive level, it’s fairly easy to see why I struggle to appreciate, and thus write about gratitude. The practice of gratitude is about focusing on the “good” in your world. It is most utile in those moments when you feel the full force of every thorn in your side. Whether it’s just been a rainy day, you’ve been suffering under the near-tyrannical rule of an out-of-touch government, or you’ve been systemically oppressed since your birth because of some varied degree of otherhood intrinsic to your being — gratitude is meant to be an active counter to the rumination on your woes.
Very shortly put, gratitude can feel like a reframining or refocusing. Don’t look at the pain and sorrow; focus your attention on the boons you do have.
What irks me here is how much that FEELS like a statement of denial. That simplified model of gratitude feels very much like “well it could be worse.”
Yeah, fucking duh. Of course it could be worse.
First of all, it could be better. Perhaps a lot better. Just because it could be worse because you could be further disadvantaged doesn’t nullify or actually reduce the earnesty of your suffering. This idea of gratitude is just some platitude version of the victim olympics in which no one deserves help or kindness except the absolute “winner of losing.”
Fuck that. Shit sucks, and you deserve kindness when you’re feeling how much it sucks.
Second of all, it presumes that you’re in dire need of comparing yourself to others. Sincerely, “better” and “worse” can suck fat eggs in conceptual hell because your suffering doesn’t actually change in reference to other suffering.
I clearly have some baggage around the basic model of gratitude. But I’m eager for a challenge most of the time, and as a result I’ve puzzled a lot on gratitude. I can confidently state I’m not quite there yet. I get glimpses of what feels more correct. It seems that I’m slowly getting an idea of the final picture but I’m definitely still sorting and assembling pieces in the meantime. Gratitude, from what I can see so far is certainly bigger than the simple model paints it to be.
Gratitude isn’t a switch to flip, or a single step of reframing. It isn’t about “seeing the positive” or “smelling the roses.” It’s not NOT about that, but those are only ever just part of it. Gratitude seems to always have a few steps. one of which is consistently “acceptance.” Acceptance is another surprisingly difficult concept to explain succinctly. It’s not about “okay” or “giving up.” Acceptance is closer to “giving in,” but might even be more about a refusal to deny the honesty of any situation. For a more concrete example, I offer myself as I’m oft to do. When my parents divorced, it was all I could at first to deny the truth of the matter. I was braced against reality, and convinced of my control over my situation. Unfortunately, I stuck in a growing chasm between my parents. At the time, I could not have considered nor accepted that my parents would have to struggle with their own emotions in regard to the situation. As a result, I suffered because of their limitations AND FURTHER because a lacking acceptance meant my expectations were not appropriately calibrated.
They say car crashes are safer when you’re drunk because your body braces less. When you try to fight the dire and immediate forces around you, you can end up with far worse wounds.
So gratitude takes acceptance, which means a doubly big ask. With acceptance, we can begin to say “this is my reality, and these are the dials I have to control it.” Acceptance will afford us knowledge over our actionable dominion. All that really means though is we can take action if we want in a direction that we want. It’s not necessarily forward, through, or away from the situation. This is because gratitude is a step toward unbiased judgments of our own perspective. Gratitude helps us see everything we do have, after acceptance helps us recognize the faces of our struggles.
Put another way — acceptance outlines the problem, and gratitude outlines the tools we can use. Even that language is charged, because we are used to the context of “solving problems”.
Gratitude can totally be reaching out to your ex for some familiarity and physical release. Gratitude can be eating your feelings because you know pie can fix it for now. Gratitude can be calling “family” to sit with in silence. Gratitude is all of these, without hierarchy because fundamentally gratitude is devoid of judgment. It’s inherently a method of survival against the emotional existential pressures of the modern world. Gratitude doesn’t guarantee a silver bullet, and it doesn’t lessen risks.
Practicing acceptance and gratitude are foremost about knowing yourself more. Introducing a bit more intentionality. Getting better at gratitude means understanding how the various tools work and when each one is best employed for differing needs. You’re not always going to need a good romp, but you’re not going to know if you never stop to think about what your dumb body is trying to tell you.
Today, of the many arbitrary days I give additional pause to gratitude. I’ve plenty to be grateful for at a rudimentary level. I’m loved and fed and sheltered. I’m even actualizing every so often.
On a deeper level, today I see gratitude for the fucking disaster of others. That every day this year, humans I don’t and can’t know have survived themselves over and over despite a litany of reasons why they wouldn’t. This year, this day gratitude feels most like awe. All of the noise we generate in our frustration is a beauteous cacophony — a tumultuous landscape of mundane melodrama and saccharine subterfuge — and it does not stop us.
Sometimes I feel like I’m in awe of the panda, seemingly always narrowly avoiding extinction.
Despite myself, I extend that feeling today to humans. Humans seemingly always narrowly avoiding extinction.
Don’t get it twisted. I am simply grateful for my handful of human delights, and I hope they know who they are (though I’ll continue to try to remind them more).
I am just also grateful today to exist, painfully in the maelstrom of humanity blooming into the future.
Fuck you all, and don’t stop.
Sincerely Not Full Yet,
August
