Um...Thanks?
a rant against gratitude
I once heard a friend describe a woman she knew as “one of those California grateful people.” I liked how the summary snapped the woman into focus, but then I felt ashamed that I wasn’t a California grateful person. I’m East-Coast to the bone, for starters, but moreover, I’m never grateful. Or never just grateful. Some years ago, when at the urging of an unimaginative therapist I started keeping a gratitude journal, the pages devolved into an inventory of neuroses.
In my amygdala, gratitude asphyxiates beneath a layer of terror. Paper covers rock. Dread covers gratitude. On Thanksgiving, my brain Google-Translates, What are you thankful for? to What are you about to lose? Any little success, any hint of stability, any reprieve from chronic insomnia will surely be wrested away.
I enjoy life more when I’m not focused on its preciousness, its precariousness, its brevity. Don’t make me engage in a ceremonious goodbye. Don’t say “life expectancy” in my presence. I can’t bear to adopt what George Carlin called “a tiny tragedy waiting to happen” (a puppy).
Over the dread layer sits a guilt layer, a sense that I’m hogging more than my share, that rather than sit around counting them, I should re-distribute my blessings.
Since the studies started coming out in the early 2000s about its positive effects on mental and physical health, gratitude—like self-care, like mindfulness, like meditation—has generated an industry: Don’t use any old journal; buy a gratitude journal! Sip from a Gratitude is My Attitude mug. Don a beaded bracelet that reads Blessed. Attend a weekend gratitude retreat for $1,500 plus airfare.
The gratitude industry has eroded the word’s meaning, making “grateful” a vague substitute for any number of emotions. When I met my niece, and she was clad in a red and white gingham dress, or when I first saw the Grand Tetons etched on the sky, I experienced not gratitude, but euphoria. When I’ve been pulled back from the brink—a dramatic car accident in Colorado, an attempted mugging in Mexico City—or when I received the text recently that my friend had survived brain surgery, my first feeling was not “gratitude,” but relief. To say, “I’m grateful” is to bypass the emotion and go directly to crediting the gift-giver, even if the giver’s identity is unclear.
What is gratitude anyway? It’s the state of being grateful, according to Merriam-Webster, those perennial smart-asses, but in usage, the concept is more philosophical. It implies debt to a force outside of ourselves. Gratitude is external credit. No one bows her head before a meal and says, “I’m grateful that I made potatoes.”
I’m not looking for permission to start thanking myself, but nor am I moved to thank the Unseen. Like many “spiritual” practices—energy healing, manifesting, summoning “the universe”—to me, the cultural edict to profess gratitude sounds church-y. It comes stamped with a divine warning: If you don’t PRACTICE GRATITUDE, you will not reap the GRATITUDE BENEFITS.
I express appreciation at every opportunity. I’m the friend who says “I love you” while hugging goodbye. If I think you’re beautiful, I’ll tell you. (If I’ve never told you you’re beautiful, sorry! You totally are.) If you come over, I’ll let you know that I hope you never leave. But must we make this…a thing? Must we package expressions of love or passion, or basic courtesy, as a puritanical virtue called GRATITUDE? Must we perform thankfulness? Must we all be so hash-tag-blessed?
What I do like about the idea of gratitude also makes me leery: the premise that we have enough. “Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed sincere words of praise,” says Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. “They’re absolutely free and worth a fortune.” Sheryl Sandberg calls gratitude “the key to resilience.” Sure, gratitude provides a respite from striving, from yearning, from the pain of focusing on what’s missing, but in the wrong hands, Just be grateful is a weapon. A greedy employer will use it to under-pay his employees. An abuser will wield it to keep his victim in line. It arms systems to abandon and shame those in need.
Maybe I’m not critiquing gratitude so much as I’m critiquing some of its self-proclaimed practitioners. What is the militant gratitude warrior trying to tell us about himself? I’ve never met one who seemed particularly content, or more enlightened than anyone else. I’ve never met a self-identified grateful person and marveled, “He seems so…grateful.”
Admittedly, I’m a skeptic. Without experiencing something, I doubt unverified accounts of it. Has anyone ever really seen a ghost? Or gotten Toxic Shock Syndrome from leaving in a tampon? Has anyone’s gratitude journal really restored her to mental hardiness?
I used to know a couple in a long-distance relationship who composed gratitude lists every night on the phone. I haven’t heard anything about them in over a decade, so I just texted the friend the couple and I share to ask a) Are they still together? and b) What became of the app the guy built to help people stop masturbating? It turns out that while the man failed to thwart the global masturbation epidemic, he did stay with his partner and even moved to her city. I don’t know if the gratitude lists kept their love alive, but I do know that if you oppose masturbation, it’s best not to stay in a long-distance relationship.
Last night, I told my 21-year-old niece that I was writing an essay about gratitude. I asked her, “What do you think when you hear ‘gratitude’?”
“I think of the Gratitoad.”
I didn’t know who the Gratitoad was.
“He’s a toad,” she clarified.
Apparently, the Gratitoad is an animated gratitude-teaching tool in elementary schools. Or at least in my niece’s elementary school.
She’s home from college for Thanksgiving, and for the first time, I could legally order her a cocktail. She told the server she wanted one that didn’t taste like alcohol. We were dining in a Tex-Mex joint, sharing the best chips and salsa in Dallas. (Dallasites, I know you’re wondering: It was Las Palmas.) The restaurant was dimly lit and cozy, with cowboy hats on the wall. I was drinking a margarita and she was drinking a cocktail that didn’t taste like alcohol. She was filling me in on college gossip. I saw her in duplicate, the way I do sometimes, the baby niece layered over the grown-up niece. I was remembering how desperately she wanted to marry Justin Bieber until she found out that he was a smoker.
And I thought about gratitude that lacks an object.
Just: thank you, thank you, thank you.
Love,
Diana
P.S. I worked on this story about Indigenous chefs for a year. It’s finally out in Saveur!
P.P.S. A writing prompt!
P.P.P.S. What is your relationship to gratitude? Let me know in the comments.
Dear Aunt Di: I am not grateful for this post. I am EUPHORIC over it. You nailed so much, articulated some unwieldy shit, all while being hilarious. At the risk of sounding spiritual, it arrived in the inbox with oddly perfect timing. In addition to lots of fortifying takeaways, I leave this realm glad to know you're getting quality time with your adorable niece, and enjoying your other bits of good news. Thanks.
I am grateful for you. ; )