On Gratitude

This is a talk that I gave in the Moraga Ward today:

Given it’s Thanksgiving week, I was asked to speak on gratitude and I’ve had a lot of fun learning about it. It’s such an overwhelming and all-encompassing topic that it’s kind of silly to think that I would have anything profound enough to say that is also specific enough that it would directly improve your life somehow or otherwise leave you at least somewhat inspired. So I’ll do my best. What I’m going to share with you is what I’ve learned about gratitude, so a lot of quotes, bear with me, then what gratitude means to me, and hopefully something in there sparks a thought or feeling that will make listening to me worthwhile.

To start, there is something that Brigham Young said that I take very seriously and is important context for this talk.

He said, “Whether a truth be found with professed infidels, or with the Universalists, or the Church of Rome, or the Methodists, the Church of England, the Presbyterians, the Baptists, the Quakers, the Shakers, or any other of the various and numerous different sects and parties, all of whom have more or less truth, it is the business of the Elders of this Church to gather up all the truths in the world pertaining to life and salvation, to the Gospel we preach, … to the sciences, and to philosophy, wherever it may be found in every nation, kindred, tongue, and people and bring it to Zion.”

So there are a lot of smart, thoughtful, or otherwise inspired people throughout history that have spoken of gratitude.

Romans

Let’s start with Cicero, the Roman philosopher and politician at the end of the republic, who famously called gratitude “not only the greatest of the virtues but the parent of all the others.”

Like many amorphous topics like happiness or truth, gratitude is sometimes hard to describe what it is exactly but it’s perhaps easier to describe what it’s not. Cicero talked quite a bit about what gratitude is not. If I were to summarize what he said were the leading causes of a lack of gratitude, it would be something like this:

1. You don’t thank people of try to repay favors

2. You take your country for granted

3. You forget about the kind acts and good events that have led you to this moment

4. You take your friendships for granted

5. You don’t thank God for your blessings

Julius Caesar praised Cicero's achievements in writing and speaking by saying "it is more important to have greatly extended the frontiers of the Roman spirit than the frontiers of the Roman empire".

This is one entire framework that we can use to think about our own gratitude. Basically, avoid these pitfalls and you will be a more grateful and, therefore, happier person. Okay, that’s one approach.

Science

There have also been many modern scientific papers studying gratitude. It is, after all, testable, especially if you get creative about how you test it.

If I were to summarize the science of gratitude it would look something like this (a lot of these come from the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley):

• They would define gratitude as a two-step process: 1) recognizing that one has obtained a positive outcome and 2) recognizing that there is an external source for this positive outcome. Which means gratitude toward another person, God, fate, nature, etc.

• Gratitude isn’t just cultural, but part of our evolutionary biology. Animals as diverse as fish, birds, and vampire bats engage in “reciprocal altruism” — behaviors in which they repay good deeds done to them by others.

• Studies have found that chimpanzees are more likely to share food with a chimpanzee that has helped them in the past.

• One study showed that U.S. voters who were sent a postcard thanking them for voting in the last election were significantly more likely to vote in the next election than were those who were sent a postcard simply encouraging them to vote.

• There is also a link between religiosity and gratitude. One study found that people assigned to pray for their partner, or pray in general, for four weeks reported higher gratitude at the end of the study than people who were assigned to think about their daily activities or to think positive thoughts about their partner. So prayer seems to increase gratitude.

• Also that religious involvement in general was significantly positively associated with gratitude.

• One study found that more grateful cardiac patients reported better sleep, less fatigue, and lower levels of cellular inflammation, while another found that heart failure patients who kept a gratitude journal for eight weeks were more grateful and had reduced signs of inflammation afterwards. So gratitude isn’t just psychological, but improves physical health.

• It has shown to produce lower levels of stress, depression, and anxiety.

• They have fewer stress related illnesses, have lower blood pressure, have higher incomes, and more satisfying relationships.

• People that are grateful donate 20% more time and money to charity.

• Grateful teens get in fewer fights in school, get better grades, are 10x less likely to start smoking.

• It has also been shown that gratitude increases with age as well, a 5% increase for every 10 years. So if you don’t want to do anything to flex your gratitude muscle, just wait.

Preachers

Ok, so we’ve got some thoughts from Cicero and the scientific community. Now what have religious leaders said about gratitude?

Jesus said, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” teaching us to lay up our treasures in heaven and be grateful for what really matters and for what God has given us.

He also taught the parable of the ten lepers. All ten were sent to the priests and as they went they were healed, but only one returned to thank him, to whom he asked, “but where are the nine? And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.”

The Quran says, “Show thy gratitude to Allah. Any who is grateful does so to the profit of his own soul” and it talks quite a bit about expressing gratitude in the face of hardship, “Yet it may happen that you will hate a thing which is better for you; and it may happen that you will love a thing which is worse for you.”

The prophet Joseph F. Smith said, “The grateful man sees so much in the world to be thankful for, and with him the good outweighs the evil. Love overpowers jealousy, and light drives darkness out of his life. Pride destroys our gratitude and sets up selfishness in its place. How much happier we are in the presence of a grateful and loving soul, and how careful we should be to cultivate, through the medium of a prayerful life, a thankful attitude toward God and man!”

There is a famous Rabbi from Houston in the 50s, 60s, and 70s named Rabbi Hyman Schachtel who wrote a book called The Real Enjoyment of Living. He had a simple but profound idea on gratitude and happiness. He said “happiness isn’t about having what you want, it’s about wanting what you have.” In one simple phrase he describes the inevitable pitfalls of materialism, the unhappiness that accompanies comparison to other people, and the happiness that comes from gratitude for what we already have. Envy and materialism both involve dwelling on what we do not have. These are in fact antithetical to gratitude by definition which is a fairly harsh thing to think about really.

The Buddha said, “Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.”

Okay, so universal agreement so far that gratitude is not just a nice to have, but it is the path to contentment, freedom from pain, love for life, and a general sense of happiness. So how do we actually have it?

How to be Grateful

I don’t know exactly. But there are a few things that have shown to be effective in practicing gratitude. So first of all we have to understand, or at least believe that, like a muscle, we can work on being more grateful, practicing appreciation for our lives every day. Here are a few:

• Gratitude journaling - “count your blessings” - write 5 things daily/weekly for which you are grateful.

• Three good things - my personal favorite - similar to journaling, but you write 3 things that went well that day and what caused those things to happen. In one study, people who did this increased happiness six months after the week-long exercise.

• Mental subtraction - imagine or write down what your life would be like if some positive thing had not occurred. This is also called the “George Bailey effect” from It’s a Wonderful Life.

• Gratitude letters or visits where you express gratitude for someone else that you haven’t properly thanked.

• Last but not least, I want to spend some time on death. At least for me the most profound expansion of my gratitude of life is reflecting on my own death, which I know sounds morbid, but hear me out. Because our very existence, every second, is a constant miracle, we tend to easily take it for granted. Reflecting on death helps us take stock of this life and consequently increase our appreciation for it.

Death

So let’s say this: this life that we are living is infinitesimally improbable no matter how you view it:

If your worldview is purely secular, life is an astrobiological phenomenon that, despite trillions of galaxies in existence, only this tiny little planet floating in space and time happened to allow for oxygenation and the cyanobacteria that formed eukaryotic life, which evolved into single-celled organisms and, billions of years later, bipedal large-brained mammals with the ability to generate consciousness and storytelling that allowed them to collaborate in tribes to accomplish incredible tasks such as hunting woolly mammoths or creating atomic bombs. Okay. That improbability is humbling and miraculous.

From a religious perspective, of all of the planets in all of the galaxies created by the hand of an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God, we somehow earned the blessing of having the ability to take a physical body and walk through this grand test we call life, choosing good over evil, battling it out with Satan, and ultimately learning light from darkness, receiving our paradisiacal glory if we are but obedient to the commandments of God. That improbability is also humbling and miraculous.

So no matter how you slice it, the fact that we are alive and talking to one another right now at this moment is impossible, yet here we are. It’s a beautiful, incredible, awe-inspiring thing, and yet here we sit worried about politics and stressed about money. So I think there is a benefit from thinking about how short and miraculous this life is and continually putting things in perspective.

And we can’t talk about death without mentioning the Stoics, who were somewhat obsessed with death.

Seneca said, “Has some time passed by? This he embraces by recollection. Is time present? This he uses. Is it still to come? This he anticipates. He makes his life long by combining all times into one. But those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear for the future have a life that is very brief and troubled.”

Marcus Aurelius said, “Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see.”

Looking to the existentialists, they would say that “happiness is when I can say that there is no where I’d rather be, there is no one I’d rather be with, and we will never be here again.”

And of course in Christianity death is not the end but just the beginning. This is a beautiful idea that brings hope and meaning to what can sometimes feel like a hopeless and meaningless existence to many. And this brings gratitude for God’s plan and for our higher purpose. And as long as we don’t allow the hope of eternal happiness to negatively impact our happiness now in this moment, then this is a powerful belief that brings real tangible gratitude for life.

So what have I done about this idea that contemplating death can actually bring gratitude for life and make you happier?

What I started to do a while back is take some time when I remember to think of what regrets I might have when I die. This is a popular story, something like “no one on their death bed wished they would have worked more” or something like that. But there’s one twist. I don’t think about myself as a 95yr old man, but five years from now. This creates a sense of urgency that helps to keep me grounded and centered on what matters now. Not so urgent that I’m paralyzed with how to live each day like it’s my last, but not far enough off that I don’t feel it.

Okay, so those are some practical takeaways that we can all pick and choose from to the extent that you’re interested in doing so. Let me move to what gratitude means to me personally, or what it is that I’m grateful for. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but a short sample:

What I’m Grateful For

First, I’m grateful for my three kids. Life seemed so important before I had kids, then after I had kids I realized how relatively meaningless my life was. Children bring purpose to life like boxing brings a punch to the face. It’s not subtle and it brings strong emotions. It’s the greatest work that I could possibly be doing and I’m grateful every day for our family of five which is genuinely the only thing that really matters.

I’m grateful for my wife. An author I like Yung Pueblo, said, “Vibrant relationships feel like a sanctuary where you are safe to bring your vulnerability and you are given ample love and care. A union void of control but filled with mutual understanding.” Not only is Emily an incredible mother But she is my sanctuary where I feel safe, and we try to make this thing we call life as purposeful and full of love as we can together, and we’re having a really great time doing it.

I’m grateful for my parents. They gave me a healthy, stable, loving foundation on which to build my own life which has allowed me to be me and to find my way without hardly a hiccup (knock on wood). And I would say that looking back on life, the one thing that stands out above anything is that there was love in our home. They loved me and wanted the best for me, even if they didn’t know exactly what that would mean.

I’m grateful for friends. Also from Yung Pueblo, “A real conversation, free from projection and ego-flexing, is a special gift. Most do not talk to listen; they talk to be heard. Self-awareness, selflessness, and a real desire to listen are required for mutually authentic and honest exchange.” I have great friends with whom I can be honest and not feel judged, and for that I am very grateful.

I’m grateful for movies. I’m a big movie fan and have a controversial viewpoint that it is the greatest art form in history. I think if Michelangelo were alive today he wouldn’t be messing around with marble, he’d be making a 10-episode dramedy for Netflix. And it would be incredible. So one movie on this topic that I love is called About time, the only rom com in my top ten. It gives a real feeling for what it’s like to live every day with meaning and appreciate the little things, to live life like the second day for those that have seen it.

I’m grateful for music. Quick Beatles history. Julian Lennon was John Lennon’s first son by first wife Cynthia. John wasn’t exactly a good father to Julian, instead focusing his love and attention to Yoko Ono and his other son Sean. Julian wasn’t even in his will. Paul McCartney, however, was usually there to console Julian after the divorce and his dad being with another woman and the song “Hey Jude” was written by Paul to Julian. It was supposed to be “Hey Jules” but Paul wanted it to be more ambiguous. The first line says, “Hey Jude don’t make it bad. Take a sad song and make it better. Remember to let her into your heart, then you can start to make it better.” Turning the other cheek and loving one another put to incredible music.

The great philosopher Jack Johnson has taught that “everybody thinks that everybody knows about everybody else but nobody knows anything about themselves because they’re all worried about everybody else.” Music brings to life powerful ideas like “judge not lest ye be judged.”

I’m grateful for our comfortable circumstances and for technology. We are all incredibly rich by global terms. We live in an age of abundance - for the first time ever more people die from eating too much than from eating too little. The tetanus shot wasn’t invented until 1924, so less than 100 years ago, the blink of an eye in the context of world history, the end of your life could have easily come in the form of a rusty nail.

I’m grateful to have hope within uncertainty and this I call faith. As I get older and allegedly wiser, which is highly debatable, life seems less and less certain. You have it all figured out when you’re young and dumb, no offense to anyone young, I don’t mean you I mean just younger than you. But I’m grateful for hope in uncertainty, which is actually a beautiful thing and doesn’t need to be scary unless we make it so. Maya Angelou said “The ship of my life may or may not be sailing on calm and amiable seas. The challenging days of my existence may or may not be bright and promising. Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude. If I insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow. Today I am blessed."

Enough

Now I’ve taken enough time, so I’ll wrap up with something that means a lot to me, maybe more than any idea I’ve talked about today, and it may not matter to you, but it has changed my life in a not insignificant way.

I’m a big fan of comedy and humor writing and there is a famous humor novel called Catch-22 (from which the saying is derived) written by a guy named Joseph Heller. It’s a WWII satire and was very popular for a long time, and still is. At his funeral, his friend told a story about him:

He said, “Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer, and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island. I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel ‘Catch-22’ has earned in its entire history?”

And Joe said, “I feel fine. I’ve got something that he can never have.”

And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”

And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”

If there is one single thing that I’ve learned in my education on gratitude it’s that I’ve got enough. I’m so grateful for everything that I have been given. For life, for love, for family and friends. For enough food, clothing, and shelter. For education, for books, for the internet. For community. I don’t know all of you yet, but you are part of my community and I’m grateful for you.

I pray that we can all find gratitude in the most mundane, the simple, and the overlooked, and find happiness in wanting what we have, not in having what we want. And in the words of Christ, “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”