An Argument Against Gratitude Sort Of

For the past seven Sundays, I have been co-leading a class with Mel Toth where we do collage and memoir-ish writing. It is quickly becoming my church, my weekly practice of tuning in to source and feeling fed.

This past week Mel talked about the word gratitude. She had us check how the word made us feel in our bodies.

This was interesting to me. If you say the word “flower”, my body responds in kind, as if you had presented the word in command form instead of as a noun. If you say “gratitude” to me, my body does nothing. The word hits the water of me like a small weight and disappears.

I am supposed to feel gratitude, and anything I am supposed to do, truth be told, I often have to wrestle with before accepting as part of my life. Gratitude has been doled out like aspirin. The word itself is clunky, unelegant.

If I am grateful for this morning’s sweet breeze, it’s largely because yesterday it was smoky and hard to breathe. If I am grateful for the ability to stand, it’s largely because I’m thinking that chances are good one day I may not be able to support my own weight.

Gratitude is often the result of comparison. I am grateful I am not hungry because so many people on the planet are starving.

So part of gratitude is comparison, and comparison is a slippery road to yuck. Once I start comparing my life or my self to others, chances are good I’ll also feel the opposite of gratitude (I had to google this): thanklessness, censure, condemnation. Ingratitude.

If today I am grateful I have money in the bank, what will I be tomorrow when there isn’t any? Gratitude can be like clouds, here one day, gone the next!

During our class last Sunday, Mel also talked about appreciation. My body loves this word. My body appreciates this word. My body wants to have appreciation slathered all over it like butter.

To appreciate something is to see it, to bear witness, to observe, to experience it. To be grateful is to hand over a thank you note on a silver platter. To appreciate is to do a deep dive, to live. To be grateful is to bow low, eyes closed.

Yes, you could argue that there is no difference between gratitude and appreciation. That, at their heart, they are the same or part of the same equation. You are grateful and so you appreciate. You appreciate and so you are grateful. You appreciate and are grateful for this day. What’s obvious is that they make great friends. Who wouldn’t want to hang out with Gratitude and Appreciation?

Actually, sometimes, me.

Sometimes those guys are pains in the butts. Sometimes I don’t want to feel either. Sometimes I want to be miserable.

Why?

Because miserable is so safe. There’s nothing to lose when I’m at rock bottom, crying. Everything is okay. Safe.

(Sort of.)

Appreciation asks me to be involved with life. It asks me to be the camera, to operate as the lens through which life is seen. Appreciation asks me to feel what it is like to walk down the street in the middle of the afternoon. Appreciation asks me to see the tomatoes as I pick them off the vine. Appreciation asks me to be aware of what I am saying when I yell “Dinner’s ready!” (Okay, these days I yell it to myself which for some reason I think is hysterical.)

I get to yell. I get to make dinner. I get to eat it.

Last night I started to think about the friends I have, and I didn’t know what I was feeling. In some ways, it felt like I was drowning. I had to slow down, breathe, think, feel. My whole body wanted to open in the effort of experiencing the word friends. If I hadn’t slowed down, I actually would have interpreted the feeling as anxiety when what I was really feeling was appreciation.

I love my friends so much and feel so lucky that I get to know them. They amaze and surprise and delight and annoy the hell out of me. The are original and predictable. They are so lovely and so unbearable sometimes. The magic is that I feel seen by them and they feel seen by me. We bloom in our mutual appreciation of each other.

Appreciation is like fairy dust. It makes everything come to life. Remember when you got your first magnifying glass as a kid and you ran around and looked at everything. The ants! Your hand! Your friend’s eyeball! Life was so exiting! Things were not as they seemed! They were so much more complex!

And sometimes downright frightening! If you want to freak out, be a fifty-five year old women and look at the skin on your arms with a magnifying glass (or even with your eyeballs). If you keep looking, though, if you breathe through the panic and confusion, you will find appreciation. Holy cow, is the body amazing. Who knew it could fold on itself like that? Who knew the body could make crepe paper? How did that even happen?

I appreciate the opportunity to be curious.

Because wonder is so flipping fun.