No need to wait for Thanksgiving Day

I’ve mentioned before that I have some trouble with gratitude; my self-centered sense of entitlement is uncomfortable with needing to thank anyone for anything.

This is why I’m always glad for the fourth Thursday in November to roll around. Though it’s a “secular” feast, Thanksgiving Day accomplishes everything a sacred holy day should: it draws me out of myself and directs me to others, and particularly to the transcendent reality that surrounds us. It reminds me that life is a gift, and that the proper response to a gift is, “Thank you.”

So, in the spirit of the holiday, I’m making a gratitude list. Here are some (definitely not all) of the people and things for which I give thanks:

• My parents
• The English language, and all those who gave it such beauty – Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Tolkien, etc.
• My friends; I’d start listing your names, but you are legion and are all far better than I deserve
• Philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, and Thomas Aquinas – for teaching me how to think more clearly
• Saints like Catherine of Alexandria, Dominic Guzman, Catherine of Siena, Thomas More, and John Henry Newman – for showing me that what is impossible for me is possible for God
• Public libraries – ’nuff said
• Twenty-first century communications technology
• Garlic, chocolate, bacon, blue cheese, which all add so much joy to the obligation of eating
• Clouds
• Cardigan sweaters
• Dishwashers and washing machines
• Mountains, and the snow that caps them

I’m sure that, if I spent more time, I could keep on adding to this list. Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, for example. But it’s a start. And if you want, feel free to tell me what you’re grateful for in the comments.

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

For me? Aw, you shouldn't have!

I had one of those “a-ha” moments over the weekend. I was thinking about words, as I often do, and I was trying to find a way to articulate the difference between recognizing life (or a friend or a privilege or whatever) as a gift and taking life for granted. And I realized, the phrases look roughly identical.

A grant, after all, is a kind of gift. It is something given to me by someone else.

So I started exploring whether there are any words we use for that sense of entitlement we call “taking something for granted” that don’t in fact refer to receiving something from someone else. Even the word “entitlement” refers to the granting of “title” or ownership of something by whomever has the authority to give it. The only words I could think of are words like “possession” or “ownership”, which really don’t convey the kind of presumptuous attitude I’m trying to describe.

Maybe presumption is itself the word I’m looking for. It literally means “taking something before,” that is, before it is given. It is taking something as if it had been granted, even when it has not. And that’s where the problematic attitude lies: it’s a lack of recognition that something is genuinely a gift. It’s the idea that I am completely and independently capable of getting everything I want or need entirely on my own without any help from anyone else ever. Ultimately, that attitude is founded on falsehood.

Gratitude: recognition of my need for others

I’m concerned about this attitude because it’s one I struggle with all the time myself. I remember as a child needing to be told to say “thank you” at Christmas or on my birthday, and thinking that I didn’t really feel grateful. I felt like I deserved the toys, or maybe even deserved better loot than I’d got. So I went through the motions and held onto presumption in my heart.

But that led me to a bitter and lonely place. I alienated many of my friends. And then something rather odd happened: when a friend did show a kindness to me, even a tiny one, I found myself utterly overwhelmed with gratitude far out of proportion to their act. It was as if all that repressed recognition of others’ gifts to me came bursting out at once. So then I had friends saying, “Enough thank yous, already! It was really nothing!”

Well, it wasn’t nothing. But it also wasn’t the thing I was most grateful for: I was most grateful for the ability to acknowledge my dependence on other people.

My illusion of fierce independence had been (and still is, in parts of my life) a kind of cage that kept me from the real world as it actually is, and from connecting to the real people who live in it. So finding a way to relate – simply by acknowledging the relationship – was a tremendous good that I could never have simply acquired for myself. I am glad my mother taught me how to say “thank you” all those years ago.

Gratitude and justice

It’s interesting that Thomas Aquinas lists gratitude as part of the virtue of justice, while generosity or giving gifts is part of the virtue of charity or love. That is, even though gifts are given freely, the acknowledgment of the gift is something owed by duty.

At first, this seems odd, and a little bit like extortion. But my own experience shows me why it’s a matter of justice. To refuse to acknowledge the gift and the giver is to deny the reality that I have received something I could not have without that other person.

I could not have received life without my parents. I could not have received friendship without my friends. Even in relationships where there is a “business” aspect, there also is a gift; I could not have received my education without my teachers’ willingness to give what they also had received. Gratitude, giving thanks for what has been granted, is simply a matter of seeing reality for what it is.

What have you that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift? (1 Corinthians 4.1; RSV)

It occurred to me that most of my own vices come from the desire to have something that is my own, something that I have accomplished by my own power or that I have made for myself. But since my very life is a gift, and my ability to do anything at all – to think or to work with my hands, to say nothing of the availability of the internet or even of language – all this is something given to me, not something I have made or could have made on my own, then I have no grounds for claiming anything in the world as entirely my own.

I have contributed to many good things. I have used my gifts well (and badly too, but that’s another post). But none of it is mine in the sense that I desire it to be. And that’s because my desire is out of step with reality.

Instead, it is mine as a gift to me. It is mine as something I have received, whether from my parents or from my friends or from the society that I live in or from God. So, instead of claiming it as my own, I will practice being grateful for it. After all, that’s the proper attitude toward a gift.

Sure, this blog is a publication of sorts. But I’m of the old school that believes you’re not really published until someone else – indeed, someone not related to you or biased by friendship – decides your work is worth putting out there. For me, that will happen tomorrow.

Where? you might ask. In a small on-line journal called This Great Society. It’s a quirky little corner of the internet, and well worth a read. I hope that recommendation includes even my own contribution to the issue.

My essay is entitled “Following Distance” and is a kind of meditation on the psychology of driving. I note that the space that separates cars on the road is also a medium of communication, and that giving another driver room is a sign of respect.

This message could not arrive at a more perfect time for me. On Monday, as I was driving home from work, I got in a fender-bender. I rear-ended the car in front of me. Fortunately, no one was hurt and the damage seemed minimal. (I left a pair of dimples on the other car’s bumper in the exact shape of the bolts holding on my front license plate.) And although the other driver called the police, I didn’t receive a ticket. The officer let me off with a warning, for “following too close.”

Just want to add my thanks to those of all the rest of the nation, and to let any current soldiers who happen to read this that you are in my prayers.

Open me!

I had a great conversation with a friend this morning. She pointed out to me that none of us choose to be here – either in the sense of being born in the first place, or where we happen to be in a job or family or what not. My situation in life is not something I have much control over, and most of it I have absolutely no control over.

And I realized that, till recently anyway, I have been harboring resentment about that. It made me feel powerless and frustrated. I wanted more control. I wanted to be where I chose to be, rather than where I was.

But there’s another way of looking at it: my life, and my situation in life is a gift. It’s both a gift to me, in that there is a great deal of good – comfort, love, friendship, and so on – in my life; and it’s a gift to others, in that I have good things to give to the people I encounter every day.

Yep, I’m God’s gift to the world.

But then again, so is everyone else. You’re God’s gift to me, for example. So it’s not that big a deal.

Anyway, I just realize that I need to shift my attitude from resentment, which is focused on what I don’t have, to gratitude, which is focused on what I do have. And that’s more realistic anyway: what I do have is real, but what I don’t have is a product of my imagination.

For what we are about to receive...

The attitude of gratitude

I find it ironic that a festival for giving thanks has both taken deep cultural root in the U.S. and even has become a civil holiday. Why? Because “the American dream” is so rooted in self-reliance, in pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps, in the notion of independence. The American ideal is to take what one earns rather than to receive what one is given.

But I think most people – American or otherwise – are too wise to believe all that. I’m certainly aware of how much I have been given without a hint of deserving or earning on my part: my very life, to begin with; my education; the love of my friends and family; the benefits of growing up in the late twentieth century in the wealthiest nation on the planet.

I think there are two ways to show gratitude: first is to rejoice at the gift, and to celebrate the one who gave you the gift; the second way is to use the gift, to unwrap it and give it a place in your life. In other words, when Grandma gives you a sweater, you tell her “Thank you” and then you wear it the next time you see her.

Developing the virtue of gratitude

For much of my life, I felt guilty about all the gifts I’d been given. I actually hated my birthday and Christmas because I had done nothing to deserve the presents I received. I somehow felt like they weren’t actually mine if I hadn’t earned them.

In other words, I’d let the “American ideal” overcome the natural order of things in my life.

Needless to say, “Thank you” did not come easily from my lips – until I realized that gifts are the most natural thing in the world. I realized that gifts always come before accomplishments or “earnings”. And that almost all the anxiety and frustration in my life came from refusing to receive anything as a gift.

So, over the past few years, I’ve been practicing the virtue of gratitude. I don’t mean just saying “Thank you.” I mean pushing aside that feeling of unworthiness and focusing on the goodness of the gift. This is even true of gifts that I don’t want or that are useless to me: I can focus on the love that someone is expressing by giving me something.

And, like all virtues, it grows with practice. By receiving small gifts, physical gifts, I find it’s easier to see the less tangible gifts. I find it’s easier to rejoice in my family, my friends, even co-workers and colleagues. I find it’s easier to see what is good in my church, my country, my home. I find it easier to give thanks for my own life, and I want to use my life for a good purpose.