What is gratitude? Currently, It’s such a buss word. It is spoken and written about everywhere and could be seen as overused, like a dose of gratitude can heal everything in an instant. You say the word, swallow the medicine, and convince yourself that everything is going to be OK. It sits around in your system soothing your pain for four to six hours. It might be enough to lift your spirits or the effect wears off. So, you then try to be thankful for something else to get that same effect. A drug with no nasty side effects. Or is it really like that?

The last two week have been very tough here. My family was wiped out with a nasty virus as I was in Oxford doing my supporting role for my ‘adoptive mother.’ The washing machine had broken, the water tank had leaked and I was having a wobble, as over £1K of bills rolled in. My car had just had a service too. It triggered my anxiety around money and I had to say to myself:

“It’s OK, your new budgeting system covers it, and just trust that the next invoice will pay off the kitchen. You are so close now. Be proud of what you have financially achieved this last year.”

This week’s post tackles a subject I have been putting off talking about because my relationship with the word ‘gratitude’ is partially uneasy and could be construed as negative. We have peddled gratitude like it’s a holy grail in the personal development world. One we must adhere to, be subscribed to, and sign up for.

Going back to my time in Oxford, I slipped momentarily into the victim, why me mode. After all, we are all human. The latest text message arrived which my aunt read out to me. Her son was doing some amazing things in New Zealand and this little voice inside my head said:

“ And what are you doing? Walking around in yet another charity shop which you frequent from here to Norfolk. That’s your main social outlet isn’t it, apart from walking around the periphery of an estate and managing to go to an odd concert or two.”

I stopped myself in my tracks and pulled out the old gratitude medicine from its invisible first-aid box. A little voice in my head said:

“But your grandson is OK and doesn’t have what you suspected. Your recent mammogram this time is clear, someone is coming to help take the door off the new kitchen to get the old washing machine out and help put the new one in (because our kitchen is just so small) Just count your blessings.”

However, deep down this is my problem with being grateful. The pain I feel when I see people scrapping around in a huge dust bowl of adversity trying to find the traces of gold to soothe their life which never seems to get easier. Life isn’t fair. I know of good people who stay poor and rich people who aren’t very nice. I know of people whose life is blessed and everything seems to fall into place. I know people who have one struggle after another.

Then you think of all that is going on in war-torn areas of the world and say to yourself how is gratitude helping them right now? It’s not stopping them from getting bombed, and killed with no reason or justice. Try saying to them just be grateful, they would rightly probably slap you in the face. Can you feel my anger rising here?

So you could justifiably say gratitude works only when you are fortunate enough to have enough basics in life as a good starting point. And it helps hugely not to be in the most deprived and war-torn areas of the world. Maybe gratitude then and its results is rather selective.

Yet, there is a huge body of evidence to say why gratitude is beneficial to us in so many ways. How our brains physically light up and change when we are grateful and how we can sleep better when our last thought of the day is one of a positive state. It programs our minds so that when we wake up the next day, we are off to a better start.

For me, I need to read Victor Frankl ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ – reflections upon surviving a Nazi Concentration camp. It’s been on my book list for a while. What I do know is that a victim status is a no, go, it gets you nowhere and we should aim to find gratitude in the smallest of places, but at the same time, if we are not happy about something then, if we can, we should act to seek change.

If I want to stop having a social life mainly walking around charity shops, then it’s up to me to make it happen. I have started an Australia fund to realise a dream which is to see my penfriend of 40 years in Perth. Something I have always wanted to do.

Finally, I will write about this subject again as I learn more about the research supporting the powerful effect of being grateful, as well as a shift in my attitude towards it. I leave you with a question. What is your relationship with gratitude? I appreciate I haven’t given you any clear answers, one way or the other.

Here is a reference for you to read more about the benefits of gratitude if you wish to explore it further.

Until next week….

Image number one from Lisa Angel Floral Positivity Flip Chart, Norwich