What is Gratitude?
Here’s one last Thanksgiving link, from a friend whose blog you should all be reading. Ron Coleman reposted a piece he wrote a year or two ago on the subject of gratitude. Here’s an excerpt.
In fact I have never understood people expressing free-floating generic “gratitude” directed at … nothing. I do not consider it to be any more logical to say, “It is directed at the Universe,” which is essentially the same exact thing. I believe that people who express “gratitude” without acknowledging the source of the benefit to which they claim to be grateful, are saying words, but not, really, expressing gratitude. Gratitude must have an object because it is an acknowledgment of need, or lack, fulfilled by the other. Failing to recognize the other nullifies gratitude, and makes it merely a statement of fact, not an expression of thanks, that the empty stomach is now full; the infirm is now cured; the benighted, enlightened.
He’s right. What’s the point of being thankful, but to no one or nothing at all? That’s not gratitude but vanity. Real gratitude is humbling and it’s good for us. We (and I by no means exclude myself from this) ought perhaps to try practicing it a little bit more this coming year.
Other Posts of Interest:
Category: The Good Old US of A
Well, I am grateful for your kind words, Jimmie!
Well, to you, of course! And even more of course, to the God Who created you, and me.
And Who created Al Gore, who brought us together this way.