Grateful: Smuggest Sentiment or Second Most Selfish Act?

Grateful: The Smuggest Sentiment or the World’s Second Most Selfish Act?

By Tony Greenberg, reaffirmed and reposted 2014

“A great many men’s gratitude is nothing but a secret desire to hook in more valuable kindnesses hereafter.” – Francois de La Rochefoucauld

We live in an era of compulsory gratefulness. Ministers scold us to thank God for all His blessings. New Age gurus demand an “attitude of gratitude.” We’re told we must give thanks for the slightest of gifts. It’s all about being grateful, if we want to create a life lived humbly yet well.

Well, gratitude, attitude.

Really, you lazy person, what have you done to be so filled with all this grateful goo? More importantly, what, exactly, did you do to express your gratitude? Did you just talk about it? Well, shut up. Go do something useful for once. And don’t talk about it.

“A man’s indebtedness is not virtue; his repayment is. Virtue begins when he dedicates himself actively to the job of gratitude.” – Ruth Benedict

· · ·Herded toward the corral of gratitude, most of us routinely mouth about how grateful we are. Then we show how deep our gratitude is in the most insubstantial, inadequate, even inane ways.· · ·

In fact, gratitude may be the smuggest of sentiments, the world’s most selfish act this side of suicide. Its adherents are too often filled with an oozy glow devoid of any corresponding action. As we expand the grasp of our gratitude, we do little to show we actually mean it.

“Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.” – Henri F. Amiel

The point? Words matter. We should give thanks, of course, but that’s different. Those are words, hopefully heartfelt. We should practice acts of gratitude, not just hollow attitudes of gratitude. Attitude is nothing but show. Until you’ve earned it, don’t use it. And don’t gloat about how much of it you have either, because that isn’t the point.

As a small example, what happened the last time you were treated to a lovely dinner in someone’s home, where they created a fabulous meal wrapped in lively conversation? They went to a lot of trouble. You had a wonderful time. Then you went home.

Did you a) begin planning how to create in turn a similarly wonderful experience; b) dash off a crappy little 20-word email and hit “send;” or c) uh, forget to do anything?

Chances are, you said “B,” and counted yourself a well-bred yet technologically modern person. Or maybe you just said “C,” and forgot to count at all. Could you at least have taken the time to write a thoughtful Thank You card in longhand, stamp and address and mail it?

There’s little in the way of actual gratitude on display here. And it only gets worse the more we embrace the attitude without the action.

“It’s a sign of mediocrity when you demonstrate gratitude with moderation.” – Roberto Benigni

This imbalance occurs because we actively misread what many different spiritual teachers and practices have long said. And we do it because it’s easier this way.

Taoists describe a circular, balanced life in their yin and yang. Each complements the other, and completes the whole. Vajrayana (Tantric) Buddhism suggests a unity of opposites, words and action, in building to an Enlightened whole. Jews, Christians and Muslims routinely give thanks to their God for the blessings He has given them.

But it’s not enough to give thanks. All these religions balance a call to recognize our blessings with something more substantive, to actively make the world better, to show, not tell.

More recent spiritual teachers such as Arnold Patent also tell us to put our lives where our mouths are. His Circle of Love and Joyfulness emphasizes giving as much as receiving. Yes, money is an expression of plenty, but it only matters as a way to give back, not as a tote board for how big your….ego is.

Leo Buscaglia went even further. In his equation, love is not something that can be given, but only may be received. Similarly, you can’t “give” gratitude. Only those who benefit from acts of gratitude can name them as such. Anyone who claims they have gratitude is just a self-absorbed showboat begging for attention.

“Anything that is of value in life only multiplies when it is given.” – Deepak Chopra

Now, appreciating all you have is indeed a lovely idea, so much so that we Americans have created an annual national day of Giving Thanks. It is our most widely celebrated and beloved holiday, the mostly non-religious feast of plenty that virtually all Americans fondly embrace.

So we gather, maybe say Grace, gorge on a feast and slip into a tryptophan-tastic daze. Yet the way we show our thanks on that day is quintessentially American in other ways too.

For most of us, the Thanksgiving consists only of sacrificing millions of turkeys and tons of cranberries to our burgeoning waistlines. Some volunteer to serve at a soup kitchen that morning, but most volunteer merely to watch football and gossip about Uncle Charles. So much for being grateful.

“If you want to feel rich, just count the things you have that money can’t buy.” –Proverb

Critics slag the Millennial generation for their sense of entitlement in the absence of any real achievement. But bless those kids: they also share a deep commitment to public and community service, to giving back, and giving back joyfully. Whoever said that about Baby Boomers or Gen X slackers, like, ever?

So it’s time we changed a few things. Cease and desist on misusing “gratitude,” both the word and the idea. Gratitude deserves better. Do something, or a lot of things, that show you actually are grateful. For goodness sake, don’t talk about how grateful you are. And wipe that smug, grateful smile off your yaps. Happy holidays! For 50 ways to express, this is a great start

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. “ – John F. Kennedy

We stand at a precipice, a moment between worlds where the very meaning of our connections is being renegotiated. The algorithms of our age have strip-mined our language, leaving husks of words that once held power. ‘Gratitude’ is one such casualty, debased into a frictionless digital commodity. It has become a performance of virtue, a fleeting caption under a filtered photo, a currency of self-congratulation in an economy of noise. We are drowning in a sea of performative thankfulness, while starving for the sustenance of genuine human reciprocity.

I remember the weight of my grandmother’s cast-iron skillet, the heft of it in my hands as a child. The smell of sizzling bacon, the way the morning light slanted across the worn wooden table. Her gratitude wasn’t a word; it was the deliberate act of nourishment, a silent transfer of love and sustenance. I recall the crisp, fibrous texture of the heavy, cream-colored stationery I used to write a thank-you note to a mentor, the slight drag of the fountain pen nib, the satisfying finality of the wax seal. The faint scent of ink and paper, a tangible artifact of respect. Contrast that with the cold, blue light of my phone screen, the almost reflexive tap of a ‘like’ button, the ephemeral nature of a 20-word email. One is an anchor, the other is smoke.

The system is designed for this dilution. In a hyper-monetized world, everything must be quantified, tokenized, and exchanged with maximum efficiency. Genuine gratitude, which requires time, effort, and vulnerability, is a wrench in the gears of this frictionless machine. It is far more profitable to have us exchange the empty calories of digital ‘gratitude’ than to engage in the messy, inefficient, and deeply human acts of reciprocity. The ‘attitude of gratitude’ is a product sold to us, a way to feel good without doing good, a spiritual bypass for the hard work of building real community.

I confess, I have been a merchant of this cheap grace. I have sent the perfunctory email, the thoughtless text. I have basked in the warm glow of a ‘grateful’ social media post, a public declaration of a private virtue I had not truly earned. There was a time I mistook the articulation of gratitude for the act of it. It was a comfortable lie, a way to feel connected without the risk of real entanglement, to feel virtuous without the sacrifice of genuine effort. It was a form of self-deceit, a way to hoard the feeling of connection without paying the price of it.

Gratitude is not a sentiment; it is a debt that is a joy to repay.