Cultivating the Attitude of Gratitude
On the eve of our national day of Thanksgiving, and after recent posts on the power of gratitude and it’s contagious nature, it occurs to me that it may be helpful to step back and ask what gratitude is in the first place.
I suppose at its most basic level it’s simply an awareness of blessing and a willingness or even eagerness to offer thanks for that blessing. But what precipitates that awareness? And if it’s primarily an awareness or perception of blessing and good fortune, it strikes me that gratitude is likely available to us anytime and in all manner of circumstances.
Which brings to mind a statement by the Apostle Paul, writing to his beloved Philippian congregation: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” What strikes me about Paul’s oft-quoted words is that Paul invites us to rejoice – another way, I think, of saying “give thanks” – always. When things are going well and not so well. When life seems rich and blessings abundant, and when they seem scarce. Indeed, Paul continues, saying, “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Phil. 4:4,6).
It’s a rather astounding injunction, when you think about it. Our lives often seem overwhelmed by worry, and yet Paul doesn’t just suggest or counsel but actually commands that we do not worry but instead bring our requests to God with thanksgiving. Strikingly, Paul doesn’t write this letter from a situation of ease or obvious abundance. Rather, he writes from prison.
Which reminds us again that gratitude is as much an attitude as it is an emotion. Gratitude, that is, can arise from a determined commitment to see the blessings of this life, a steadfast and practiced resolve of noticing and focusing on what is good.
The following TED Talk by Tania Luna gives a powerful example of this perspective. Forced to flee her native Ukraine after Chernobyl, Tania and her family were so poor that anything good that came her way seemed a great blessing. Finding a penny made her feel like a millionaire, and a homeless shelter seemed to her and her family like a hotel. As Tania, now much better off than she could have ever dreamed, reminds us, a sense of blessing and gratitude have little to do with external circumstances but everything to do with attitude and perspective.
It’s a moving and brief (under 6 minutes) Talk, and I highly recommend watching it at some point over this Thanksgiving holiday, as it helps us reclaim a sense of the wonder of all the blessings that adorn our lives and yet are so easy to take for granted, even miss altogether. For in the end the issue isn’t wealth or poverty, good fortune or bad, but rather the issue is attention – focusing on the manifold blessings all around us – and attitude – a commitment to not take blessings small and large for granted but rather to notice and give thanks for them.
Which brings me back to Thanksgiving. For while I think it quite right that we set aside a particular day on which to give thanks for our many blessings as a nation and as individuals, I sometimes wonder whether we may unintentionally come to see gratitude as an occasional or special activity rather than a regular and vital part of our life together. It doesn’t have to be that way, of course. We can experience Thanksgiving as an annual call to regularly adopt the attitude of gratitude and allow the many small blessings of the everyday and the ordinary remind us of just how extraordinary blessed we are such that we, like Tania and the Apostle Paul, find it possible to rejoice and give thanks always.
Blessed Thanksgiving!
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