Gratitude with Attitude: the Radical Act of Being Thankful

These early October days I keep looking around me at the colors, the vividness of life just out my doorstep. I wake up each day to color, to green, red, orange, yellow. To swaying limb and sailing cloud. To sunrise, and blue jay call. I see it all, and for a brief moment I am alive with the feeling of joy and thankfulness for all that I am and see and feel. And then, from downstairs, I hear my 4 year old yell, my toddler cry, my husband saying, “Stop!” in a loud voice. And I am brought back to the rigors of my day. My gratitude is replaced by more mundane or difficult feelings. And life goes on.But I am better for that moment of thanks, for it sustains me, helps me move a little more fluidly through the whining, the spills, the chaos of life as the mother of two young, loud boys.


I have been working to include a feeling of thanks into every day. Though it doesn’t necessarily last throughout the rest of the day, I try to notice what I am grateful for each morning. Gratitude works like a strong medicine. It is like firm ground. The energy that it brings with it can carry us through our more challenging days. Immediately, when I consciously evoke it, or it spontaneously arises, it brings me present, into this moment on this spot on earth. It shows me what I have, not what I am missing. It is so easy to focus on what it is we lack–money, quiet, time, a big house, a healthy planet. But doing so can lead us into despair, can regurgitate anger and inertia. When we recognize what we do have– beauty around us, quiet evenings, good friends, playful children– we feel a surge of joy (however small a surge in the more difficult times, but a surge nonetheless).

But feeling gratitude can do more for us than help us to have a better day. To harbor gratitude in a culture of “not enough” can be a radical act of empowerment: a rejection of the values that lead us in to destruction , and an affirmation of our very right to be alive. Entranced by the ideas of “more” and “better”, we tend to forget the basic miracle of our very lives. We are alive! We have the gift of life.We are humans, with hard bone, flexing and flexible muscle, blood like water, eyes that see, and see ourselves, voices that come out of our bodies and create meaning, and ears that hear and interpret, with minds that can make choices, and hearts that can love. In my best moments I feel that miracle, am amazed by just being alive. As Joanna Macy says, gratitude is revolutionary: it “contradicts the predominant message of the consumer society, which is ‘you’re not enough’. One of the cruelest aspects [of this society] is that it breeds profound dissatisfaction...taking from people their very birthright–to be happy in their skin...Gratitude work is liberating and subversive.”

In this time, especially, it seems hard to remember what we have, how blessed we are. We see life growing harder, we see it slipping away, and everything can feel so difficult. But when we take the time to look, to remember what we are made of and to notice the beauty that still thrives around us– be it trees, a kind gesture, a mural on a building, grass in the sidewalk crack, or the miracle of our own fingernail (thin, ridged, hard, flexible, composed of millions of cells) we feel the preciousness again, and we therefore want to fight for it. I want to fight for my fingernails’ right to live, for my babies fingernails’ right to live; I want to fight for the continued experience of hearing the sound of a violin, for the vision of a sunset, for taste of an apple. . . Gratitude reminds us that we can choose, as we are blessed with consciousness and will, to continue on this journey of life. Because of my gratitude I can say, “ I love this, I choose to keep this in my life”. Most times this choice will take work, but the gratitude, the love, will give the continued energy necessary. Gratitude empowers us once again.

There are many simple ways of cultivating gratitude. In our house we practice being grateful each evening. As we sit for dinner, my four year old will ask us what we are each “grateful for”. I must have started him on this, but he has done this since he was two and he loves doing it. Children are naturals at loving what is. . . We also take time once a week to go around and individually say what we appreciate about each other. This is grounding and healing and reminds us of what is important. It isn’t too hard to incorporate a practice of gratitude into your life–remembering to do it is often the hardest part. I used to wake up each morning and count ten things I was thankful for that day. Some days were harder than others, but it helped set my day off on the right note. Being the foundation, or wellspring, of all religions and spiritual disciplines, it is not hard to find other examples of practices. Experiencing gratitude is the first step in the “spiral” in Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects (work that I am deeply inspired by and that is dedicated to the healing of our world). Here is one of the exercises she provides for fostering gratitude and seeing the good in other and the world. “This practice is adapted from the Meditation of Jubilation and Transformation, taught in a Buddhist text written two thousand years ago at the outset of the Mahayana tradition. You can find the original version in chapter six of the Perfection of Wisdom in 8000 Lines.

Relax and close your eyes. Open your awareness to the fellow beings who share with you this planet-time...in this town...in this country...and in other lands......See their multitudes in your mind's eye......Now let your awareness open wider yet, to encompass all beings who ever lived...of all races and creeds and walks of life, rich, poor, kings and beggars, saints and sinners...see the vast vistas of these fellow beings stretching into the distance, like successive mountain ranges......Now consider the fact that in each of these innumerable lives some act of merit was performed. No matter how stunted or deprived the life, there was a gesture of generosity, a gift of love, an act of valor or self-sacrifice... on the battlefield or workplace, hospital or home...From these beings in their endless multitudes arose actions of courage, kindness, of teaching and healing. Let yourself see these manifold and immeasurable acts of merit......


Now imagine you can sweep together these acts of merit...sweep them into a pile in front of you...use your hands...pile them up...pile them into a heap viewing it with gladness and gratitude...Now pat them into a ball. It is the Great Ball of Merit...hold it now and weigh it in your hands...rejoice in it, knowing that no act of goodness is ever lost. It remains ever and always a present resource...a means for the transformation of life...So now, with jubilation and gratitude, you turn that great ball...turn it over...over...into the healing of our world.



I have been trying to see, with some great success recently, that it is a privilege to be alive right now, in this most tumultuous time, because humans are waking up to who they are: conscious beings in a beautiful, alive and unfolding universe. We are creating our own path. Gratitude allows us to recognize all that we do have already– this gift of life, and this gift of conscious life (our own and the many others here with us)– so that we are able to create the world we want. I am so grateful for gratitude. At the least, it helps us through a hard day; at it’s best, it is the foundation for transforming our world into a place of joyful co-existence with all life.