Gratefulness

 Gratefulness

The Humbling Virtue

To my descendants,

If there is one quality I hope you will cultivate throughout your life, it is gratefulness.

Gratefulness may appear to be a simple virtue. We say “thank you” when somebody helps us. We appreciate a kindness, a meal, an opportunity, a friendship, or some unexpected good fortune. But as I have grown older, I have come to realise that true gratefulness is much deeper than good manners.

It is a way of seeing life. When you are genuinely grateful, you recognise that you did not arrive where you are entirely by yourself. Someone taught you. Someone helped you. Someone opened a door. Someone gave you an opportunity. Someone tolerated your mistakes. Someone believed in you when you were still uncertain of yourself.

Even the person who appears to be completely self-made has depended upon countless other people — parents, teachers, friends, workers, strangers, institutions, previous generations and circumstances that he did not create.

Once you understand this, gratefulness produces something extremely important: humility.

You begin to realise that you are not the centre of everything. You recognise your own inadequacies and limitations. You understand that there were moments when you needed the knowledge, patience, generosity or kindness of another person. And when you sincerely appreciate that help, something inside you softens.

Pride becomes smaller. Anger becomes less necessary. The need to prove yourself becomes weaker. Many conflicts arise because two people are defending their pride. Each insists that he is right. Each believes that he deserves more. Each remembers what he has given but conveniently forgets what he has received.

Gratefulness interrupts this way of thinking.

It reminds you: “I have received something too.” That small realisation can remove an enormous amount of friction from human relationships. A grateful person is therefore often easier to live with.

When someone does something good for you and you sincerely acknowledge it, that person feels that his effort has meaning. He knows that his kindness has not disappeared into an empty space.

Naturally, he becomes more willing to help you again. Other people who observe your character may also feel more comfortable helping you because they know that you do not take kindness for granted.

But the opposite is equally true. An ungrateful person slowly teaches the people around him not to help him. If every kindness is forgotten, every sacrifice ignored and every favour treated as something automatically deserved, eventually people withdraw.

Why continue giving to someone who never recognises what he receives This is why gratefulness has practical consequences. It creates goodwill. Goodwill creates trust. Trust creates relationships.

And relationships often carry us through situations that intelligence, money and individual ability cannot solve alone. But gratefulness should never become a calculation.

You should not say thank you merely because you hope to receive something again. That is bargaining, not gratitude. Real gratefulness comes from recognising that something good has entered your life and understanding that it did not have to happen.

There is another gift hidden inside gratefulness. It teaches you how to appreciate the present. We human beings have a strange tendency. Once something becomes part of our daily life, we stop seeing it. We complain about our house until we meet someone without one. We complain about our family until somebody we love is gone. We complain about our body until illness arrives. We complain about our work until employment disappears. We complain about ordinary days without understanding that an ordinary peaceful day may itself be a great blessing.

Gratefulness restores our eyesight. You wake in the morning and realise: I am alive. I can see the morning light. There are people whom I love. There is food to eat. There are things I can still learn. There is work I can still do. There is another day in front of me. Nothing extraordinary may have happened. Yet suddenly the ordinary becomes valuable.

This is one of the great psychological powers of gratefulness. It changes life without necessarily changing the circumstances of life. The same room appears different. The same family appears different. The same meal tastes different. The same morning feels different. The world has not necessarily changed.

You have changed the way you are looking at the world. And when the mind changes its relationship with the world, the body often follows. There is less tension, less resentment, less comparison and less struggle against everything that is imperfect.

Gratefulness tells the mind: “This may not be perfect, but there is still something here worth appreciating.” That sentence alone can save us from a great deal of unnecessary unhappiness.

This does not mean that you should accept injustice, tolerate wrongdoing or stop trying to improve your circumstances. You can be grateful and ambitious. You can be grateful and critical. You can be grateful while still wanting to change the world. Gratefulness does not mean surrendering your judgement.

It simply prevents dissatisfaction from poisoning everything that you already possess. There will always be someone richer than you, more talented than you, more beautiful than you, more powerful than you or more fortunate than you.

If you build your happiness upon comparison, you will never finish comparing. There will always be another person above you. But gratefulness turns your attention from what is absent to what is present.

Instead of asking only, “What am I still missing?” you also learn to ask, “What have I already received?” These two questions create very different lives. I have also learnt that gratefulness becomes increasingly important with age.

When we are young, we easily imagine that everything came from our own ability. Later we begin to understand how much depended upon timing, luck, circumstances and the generosity of others. We remember the teacher who encouraged us. The friend who stood beside us. The stranger who gave us advice. The person who introduced us to someone. The family member who sacrificed something quietly.

Sometimes we only understand the value of these people many years later. Therefore, do not wait too long to express your gratitude. If someone has helped you, tell them. If someone has taught you something, acknowledge them. If somebody has been kind to you, remember it.

If your parents have raise you well, recognise it while they are still able to hear you say so. One day there may be many things that you wish you had said. Say some of them now. And when you wake each morning, try occasionally to ask yourself:

What am I grateful for today? It need not be something magnificent. A cup of tea. Good health. Rain after a hot afternoon. Someone waiting for you at home. A conversation. A tree outside the window. The ability to walk.

The possibility of beginning again.

The more carefully you look, the more you will discover that life is filled with small gifts that become invisible only because they are familiar. Perhaps this is one of the secrets of living well: Do not allow familiarity to destroy appreciation. Gratefulness keeps appreciation alive. And appreciation makes life richer without requiring life to become richer.

So remember this: Be grateful not because the world owes you kindness. Be grateful because every genuine kindness is something that could have been absent. Be grateful because it keeps arrogance away. Be grateful because it reminds you that none of us travels through life entirely alone.

Be grateful because people remember those who remember kindness. Be grateful because it allows you to enjoy what you already have while continuing to work towards what you hope to become. Above all, be grateful because gratitude teaches humility.

And humility leaves enough empty space inside a person for wisdom, friendship and something to enter. You may accumulate wealth. You may accumulate knowledge. You may achieve status. You may travel across the world and accomplish extraordinary things.

But if you lose the ability to appreciate what has been given to you, you may become very successful and yet strangely poor. So wherever life takes you, carry this simple habit: Remember what you have received.
Remember those who helped you. Appreciate what is still with you. And whenever possible, return kindness with kindness.

That is gratefulness.

And gratefulness, quietly practised over a lifetime, becomes a form of goodness.