I’ve always loved Thanksgiving, and it’s always seemed to me a much less complicated-feeling holiday than Christmas is. I especially like the point of Thanksgiving; slowing down to be thankful, and reflecting on just how many things, especially small things you have to be grateful for.
Are being thankful and being grateful the same thing? As far I can tell they are, but for me, one resonates more than the other. To be thankful seems to me a more limited version of being grateful. When I’m thankful, it’s for a specific thing or quality in my life. Another way to say it would be thankfulness seems to be attached to a specific event, or relationship, or to require a specific object.
Gratitude feels more all-encompassing. This may not be a working definition for anyone else, but for me, when I feel gratitude welling up in me, it’s not necessarily attached to one thing, or one feeling. At the same time, I may be grateful for something specific, but I also experience a gratitude infused with wonder at the plain fact that I’m alive, conscious, and have the luxury of noticing everything in my experience at that moment.
When it comes to being grateful, the smaller, the less noticed the blessing, the better. When was the last time you took the time to notice, that as a conscious being, you can feel the sun on your face, or feel the breeze on your skin, or that, because you’re a conscious being, you get to experience these sensations?
When was the last time you took a moment to notice you’re a conscious being?
When was the last time you reveled in your ability to take a deep breath, stretch your body, feel the air flowing across you as you move through it, see the face of a loved one, or the smile on the face of someone you’ve never seen?
When I experience gratitude, there is a cascade of sensations, and it might be summed up like this: here I am, a spiritual being having a human experience, just like everyone else. Isn’t it incredible I get to experience all this? Amazingly, gratitude isn’t work. If it feels like work, it may be time for a closer look and a readjustment.
Here’s a question that might help. Can you be grateful without also being happy?
I don’t think so. Happiness is the inevitable result of gratitude. And that cocktail of gratitude and happiness is the best antidote I know to what feels like problems, or difficulties, or limitations in my life.
The idea of Thanksgiving is a lovely one, but it suggests that there is a season, or a particular day for feeling grateful. The gratitude that has infused and infected my life in the last few years has led me to believe otherwise. If the experience of feeling gratitude leads to happiness, why would you pay close attention to it only on one single day, or season?
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