The One Practice that Makes all the Difference

Most of the arguments in Arthur C. Brook’s NYT article “Choose to Be Grateful. It Will Make You Happier” are well-known givens: “acting grateful can actually make you grateful”; “acting happy, regardless of feelings, coaxes one’s brain into processing positive emotions”; “choosing to focus on good things makes you feel better than focusing on bad things”; “choosing gratitude can also bring out the best in those around us”; and “give thanks especially when you don’t feel it.”

Them being a provenance of common sense doesn’t make these truisms less significant, though. On the contrary, as discussed in one of my CL episodes, fundamental life insights often come to us in trite packaging, the kind of asininities splashed on mugs and car decals. (I briefly refer to this in a previous blog post.) Paradoxically so, however, their significance is inversely proportional to their, at times, saccharine vibe. A point of note I would do well remembering, to be honest.

But I want to raise another point, one that recent experiences have pressed upon me with renewed clarity. It concerns the settled conviction that gratitude should be regarded as a meta-tool, a craft of living practice of cardinal significance. How so? Quite simply, I can think of few other interventions that have such an instantaneous effect on my “states,” i.e., the amalgams of cognitive processes and affective “feels” at any given moment. Despondency, anger, frustration, jadedness, doubt, and resentment—these and other phantoms dissipate, more or less so, in the face of gratitude. Astonishing, really! Self-analysis and visualizations play but a second fiddle in terms of their transformative impact, as do changes in body language, Amy Cuddy’s passionate advocacy notwithstanding. In my book, anyway.

I know, nothing new is being shared here. Both common wisdom and psychology have underscored this point repeatedly: our language structures reality and the sense of subjective well-being. Nevertheless, I continue to be amazed at the potency of this pharmakon, this elixir of the highest order. Whenever I remember not to push directly against my “states” but meet them instead in an aikido-like fashion with the subtle grace of gratitude, my soul registers begin to change. Partially, at least. And I’ll take that any time of the day.

So, I embrace St. Paul’s adage to “give thanks in all circumstances” (1. Thess. 5:18) as my life philosophy, with gusto commensurate to a recovering cynic at that.

How Marcus Aurelius Taught me Gratitude and Moral Mindfulness

In the past, whenever I would crack open Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, I would instinctively skip Book 1 (“Debts and Lessons”). I would repeatedly dismiss it as a perfunctory foreword, listing that it does all the people that impacted him throughout his life. OK, good, nice, touching, let’s move on. It took an audiobook listening of the same to disabuse me of my ignorance. (It must have been Richard Armitage’s beguiling voice that did it. You have to get that version.) As I allowed the cadence of Aurelius’ gratitude to roll over me, I finally understood what that chapter was about:

1. Good people that come across our path are one the life’s greatest gifts. That ought to occasion unceasing gratitude.

2. Moral exemplars are essential in crafting our identity values and aspirations.

3. Not one person can embody all the potentials of human goodness transformed by grace.

4. Remembering and recollecting virtuous people might be more valuable than any ethical theory, including a theory of virtue.

5. Such recollecting needs to be frequent.

There is nothing here that a Christian needs to object to, including the lessons that Aurelius learned from Maximus:

Self-control and resistance to distractions. Optimism in adversity—especially illness. A personality in balance: dignity and grace together. Doing your job without whining. Other people’s certainty that what he said was what he thought, and what he did was done without malice. Never taken aback or apprehensive. Neither rash nor hesitant—or bewildered, or at a loss. Not obsequious—but not aggressive or paranoid either.

Right!

Here, then, is a good project for us, to be completed at some point in the near future. Our personal “Debt and Lessons” chapter to ground us in life, foster gratitude, and dispel any lingering existential rut.