"Should you celebrate (Thanksgiving) even if you don't feel grateful?"
I was struck by this quote on Sunday in a New York Times article from a person living in Spain. Apparently to foreigners it's a little bit odd to celebrate a holiday about gratitude if you aren't a naturally grateful person.
But we Americans insist on celebrating Thanksgiving anyway, even if we've struggled with gratefulness in the past. There's some part of us, beyond the turkey and stuffing, that knows being grateful is ultimately a choice.
And it is. In a 2003 study, researchers asked a group of participants to keep a weekly list of things they were grateful for, and the other group kept a list of either negative or neutral events in their lives. Ten weeks later the group that kept the list of things they were grateful for were significantly happier.
Some people are more naturally grateful than others, but it's still a choice.
It's easy to forget to be grateful, especially when you're in college. When the culture surrounding you tells you that your self-worth is dependent on your GPA, your prospects for graduate school, your playing time (if you're an athlete), whether or not your hit 100 "likes" on your newest Instagram picture, and dozens of other things that are by and large irrelevant.
Being grateful isn't something you do just when you feel like it. In fact, it's probably more important to cultivate it when you'd rather not. Why?
Because ultimately, it's one way to a meaningful life. Oliver Sacks, famed author and neurologist, said it best just before he died this past August:
" I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.
Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal. on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure."Thank you for reading this blog. Have a happy Thanksgiving.