Opinion
Opinion: On Gratitude
Matt Hemmert | Lehi Free Press
The fourth Thursday in November brings many things. My childhood memories start with placing pitted black olives on my fingertips while stealing my grandmother’s sweet gherkins from heavy crystal bowls spaced carefully on adorned tables.
I often thumb through subsequent years of memories like a flipbook movie. Children enter swaddled and grow, and other people come and go. Locations change, along with what we share at haphazard tables that always need more elbow room. But there’s a familiar hum as the scenes change over the years. It ebbs and flows, changes tone and tune, and becomes more noticeable and soothing up to today. It’s easy to name it: gratitude, and its sibling thankfulness. They’re ever-present.
Some twenty years ago, I was walking to graduate school courses on a gloomy Pacific Northwest morning. As was often the case while I dodged worms and slugs, I was attempting to reconcile legal philosophy with religious philosophy as tempered by modern-day psychology, liberally sprinkled with some universal values. I stopped and realized I didn’t know the difference between gratitude and being thankful. I flipped open my Motorola Razr and tried to key in a note to myself to dig deeper.
Since then, I’ve come to understand that gratitude is essentially a state of being, and thankfulness is the act of expressing gratitude. My life seasons change, my family and loved ones grow and change, and my understanding of gratitude grows and changes.
Gratitude is a deliberate shift in perspective; gratitude is choosing to see a richness and abundance of good in a culture that often magnifies and obsesses on good’s scarcity.
Gratitude doesn’t ask or require us to deny or ignore loss, uncertainty, disappointment, despair, or pain. Instead, it is a deific muscle that begs to work and grow in those adverse circumstances. When gratitude is engaged with intention and authenticity, it can fortify us in the inevitable times that seem to be labeled as contraindications for its use, let alone its existence. It is a balm during the hard, dark, painful, sad, and hopeless times. Gratitude reminds us who and what is present: loved ones, friends, a caring community, a religious congregation, wonderful strangers, hope, and the divine. And it shines. Man, does it shine.
Gratitude’s greatest gift isn’t just to illuminate the soul in hard times. It’s a transformative force that changes us, making us true students of the virtue that Cicero didn’t just deem the greatest virtue but the parent of all other virtues.
As we nurture and practice gratitude, it becomes second nature and instinctual rather than a conscious “gratitude power activate!” process. We grow in self-regulation and managing interpersonal relationships. It allows us to become more invested in the daily roles and duties that define us: parent, partner, spouse, friend, sibling, coworker, leader, attorney, writer, photographer, neighbor, congregant, community member, etc.
The authentic practice of gratitude creates a durable spiritual and emotional framework through which we perform intentional thanksgiving for those within our circles of influence. It builds bridges, deepens trust, dispels cynicism, opens hearts, fosters confidence, emboldens compassion, calms fear, encourages confidence, unifies hearts, unfolds clarity, stills anxieties, and strengthens bonds. It says without words, “You matter to me.”
Read that long and incomplete list of results and impacts again, and then join me back here. The authentic practice of gratitude does the same to the one engaged in it. It has a synergistic, equal, and reflective impact that we can’t replicate in any other way. With altruism as a catalyst, it is the only one-way or unilateral human expression that asks nothing in return.
The true beauty of gratitude is its accessibility. It doesn’t require academic accolades, wealth, status, location or perfection. The seed was planted in us by our first Parents. It’s an instinct, a millennia-old echo found in that space between our cellular structures and that spark we call our souls. In a world often consumed by comparison, jealousy and complaint, gratitude offers an antidote—a path toward purpose that is individual in its pursuit but without limitation in its application.
As the world grinds on, somewhat apathetic to what truly matters this time of year, let’s lean into the quiet moments and find that hum that threads our lives together. We have this annual inflection point to slow down and look inside ourselves to act outside ourselves in a way that shares what’s loving, good and kind.
Sounds like a practice that can and should continue indefinitely.
