Gratitude – the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness
Thankful – pleased and relieved
This is an interesting thing. Gratitude in my mind has always felt like acceptance. My father handed down a punishment that I was supposed to accept. Like it was the end. However, on my way into work I was listening to Jordan P interview a guy. The topic was the longevity of happiness.
I asked Adam a couple days ago if God only shows up in the bible when people have lost hope. It was an infantile question. I think the question was immature but it resulted in a more useful line of thought and a better question. You can’t get to good questions without asking bad ones first. The only way you know you have a good question is if you have bad ones to compare it to.
It led me to this question, well maybe it is not a question. The loss of hope and the state of gratitude cannot coexist. The feeling of hopelessness can be expressed in two ways. Hopelessness, with gratitude and hopelessness without gratitude.
Hopelessness without gratitude is filled with bitterness, resentment, and selfishness.
Hopelessness with gratitude is filled with humility, peace, and discernment.
Jobs’ wife was hopeless without gratitude and at first glance you would have thought that Job was hopeful with gratitude. However, it is impossible. You can not be in a state of present and future at the same time about the same thing. Whether we realize it or not we are oscillating between past, present and future.
“For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
Esther 4:14 ESV
“Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.”
Job 1:20-22 ESV
“Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die.” But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.”
Job 2:9-10 ESV
“After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And Job said: “Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived.’”
Job 3:1-3 ESV
Job appears in the first two chapters to be doing all the right things. He is not sinning, humble and hopeful.
Hope – a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen
Hope is a funny thing. There are only a few areas in which hope is encouraged. Gratitude is encouraged more often. Thankfulness is encouraged more than hope. I am not sure hope is a bad thing, but it is a dangerous thing. I think there is a book called dangerous hope. If not, I should write one.
Anxious – feeling or showing worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome – very eager or concerned to do something or for something to happen.
The line between hope and anxiety is vague. Probably because there really is no line.
Both of these pull us out of the present and place us either in the past or the future. With hopefulness and anxiety you miss now.
There are those that have an anxiety disorder, and if they are the same, is it possible that you are also having a hopefulness disorder?
Anxiety and Hope are both not sin on their own but they both can lead there eventually. We need hope in moderation, just as much as we need anxiety. They serve an important purpose. They help us to plan. They keep us alive, inform us of danger, and indicate possibilities. Hope lets us experience a taste of the thing we want so that we can make decisions now to achieve it. However, if all you have are tastes of the thing, you will starve.
The point I am trying to make is hope is not an ideal state. Just as anxiety is debilitating, so is hope. Especially prolonged in the wrong direction, that will kill you. Gratitude is better and also not the same as hope.
So here is the part that I think keeps us from being grateful more often. By submitting to being grateful, you feel like you are at the same time saying that you have to stay in the position you are in. That you cannot improve or move. Grateful, growing up, felt like you will take this, and like it.
Like – agreeable, enjoyable, satisfactory, want.
I think…I think, you can be grateful and at the same time not like something. You can not enjoy it, agree with it or want it. However, you can be grateful.
I am struggling to not turn this into a silver lining cliche feeling because I truly believe that there is a difference between seeing the positive and being grateful. The difference is subtle but the impact is noticeable and profound.
Seeing the silver lining is closer to hope and it implies a justification for why you should feel happiness or satisfaction. Gratitude is an action that produces a state of pleasure. The pleasure is not in the things itself, those are changeable and subjective. The pleasure comes from the quality of gratitude and the state of thankfulness.
Gratitude is not circumstantial. Gratitude is not dependent on better or worse. Gratitude is based on choice. The same as love. Gratitude is the pursuit of love in its most direct form. You cannot pursue love any better than through gratitude because it is a pursuit of thankfulness. The substance of thankfulness is truth. The only lasting fulfillment is attained through the thankfulness in what is the purest truth.
Pleased – feeling or showing pleasure and satisfaction, especially at an event or a situation
You cannot have satisfaction in the future. Pleasure is present tense. This is interesting because hope deferred creates impatience. When hope is not realized in a subjective time frame then impatience. You cannot be impatient about something now. You cannot be gratefully impatient.
There is also another interesting thing. Being grateful is often followed by a qualifier that undercuts the gratefulness. It often goes something like this, I am grateful for the car I drive even with all its problems, because it could be worse, I could have no car and only a bike. This is not gratitude.
This is circumstance comparison. It is not thankfulness, it is justifiable compromise. It’s like saying, I don’t appreciate this chicken meal because I really wanted steak. However, at least it’s not poop. This is as bad as… no it is ungratefulness. You may think you are being grateful but it is not gratitude for the right thing. You are not grateful for the chicken. You are grateful that you don’t have to eat poop.
That is why this type of thinking can only get you so far. Because most of the time you should never have to eat poop. But it doesn’t deal with the foundation.
This is hard. It is the hardest thing. To be grateful without qualification or justification. Good luck, I don’t know how. I can offer no insight. I am struggling through it myself.
There is also a good chance I am completely wrong. Its just the thoughts in my head sometimes.
Nos & Rehtaf, Dnabsuh 