What's gratitude got to do with it?

I sat at the table, frowning down at the pumpkin left on my plate.

“I don’t like pumpkin,” I growled.

“Oh, eat it up darling”, my mother said. “Be grateful you have food on your plate. There are children dying of starvation in Biafra.”

To me, it meant nothing. What did starving children in Biafra have to do with me – or pumpkin? All I felt was frustration from my mother, and revulsion for the pumpkin.

Needless to say I didn’t eat the pumpkin. I suspect I missed out on dessert because of it, but there is no memory of that, just the incomprehensible logic and the negative emotions. Gratitude was a duty without reward or pleasure – not something to take on easily, and not with any positive feeling.

And then there was the teacher in early high school, frustrated with a class she could not control. “I’ve just spent 30 minutes explaining this to you,” she said. “You need to be grateful for what I give you. It will help you pass the exams.”

Exams were a good 3 months away, so there was no urgency, and the boys determined to make her life a misery, continued disrupting.

Again, not the best behaviour management, at a time when most of us were feeling unstable with the awkward situation and the gratitude was presented as a threat.

Onward to this decade of my life, and I have read much as I entered the work of being the best I can be.

“Gratitude” is proclaimed. “Practice gratitude daily.”

“Um, no'” I thought, resistance coming up fiercely. Too much negativity rose in me and I could not see how that was going to be a peaceful, positive practice.

Like many of us I guess I need to be down to do the work.

So there was a time I was, down, that is; waking up in the morning, with no desire to get up, no motivation, and feeling lost and lonely and bereft.

Perhaps “midlife crisis” maybe even “existential crisis” is the appropriate label.

It was certainly a time to renew, reset and dissolve some mindsets, beliefs and ways of being that no longer served, and it has been a long road of untangling the issues, of using story as much as possible because it works for me

and finally I have found that gratitude is one of the answers.

(After the answers story gave me, the next was to just put my feet on the floor without any motivation and then take the next step – when it comes to getting out of bed – thank you to a beautiful lived experience speaker I heard years ago – your message stuck, Ben!)

Deliberately using gratitude also came because I had to try something, anything – and it finally worked as I found my own way into the practice.

I think that particular history explains why this video that came with Thanksgiving Day this year touched my heart.

Whatever you may think of this comedian, wait through his humour and watch the story …

The feeling, the positive emotion of being together in a new country, of having taken an opportunity and acted on it adds so much to the change of positivity around thankfulness. Add in the physical human connection of belonging and the homely, safe dinner table, and the circumstances are right for “Thanks” to take on its true meaning.

It is uplifting and positive and I have found the same for myself – adding in positive emotion, visualisation and physical production of safety and connection with others, or even one other.