Gratitude is challenging to teach or discuss at any age, for it often comes off as a transactional emotion. ‘Because that person did this for you, you should be grateful.’ In my faith, I often hear or read that expression to describe why we should honor God. However, I suggest a different way to look at it. I assert that gratitude is a causal variable on our path to happiness, which lies only on the road to giving. If we don’t have gratitude, we are incapable of the sacrificial giving inherent in relationships that express Love.
Bad Logic: ‘Because that person did this for you, you should be grateful.’
I’m not suggesting that if you express gratitude by force of will, your will be giving or learn to be giving to others. Instead, I suggest that if you examine your relationships and note, or count, the things you have taken for granted or previously ignored that advanced your life, and you feel gratitude, you are already empowered to live a sacrificial life. It’s not prescriptive; if you do this, you get that. It’s observational. People who give freely without counting costs have experienced gratitude. It’s reasonable to doubt this, and the argument is a tad on the transformational, motivational speaking, coaching rah-rah side of things. Still, the counterargument is often, ‘there was nothing good in [my trauma].’
‘There was nothing good in my trauma’
My trauma involved an accident in 1986, which robbed me of my profession and my ability to think, walk, and talk, which caused a 200-pound weight gain. I was told I would be dead, divorced, jailed, or permanently hospitalized within 12 months because of the resulting brain injury and PTSD. From 1986 until the summer of 2017, I thought I could never again contribute to society in an intellectual, academic, or spiritual way past teaching karate. Teaching karate was my only societal contribution. Not to belittle that role, as it is substantial, but it was without using the considerable gifts I was given at birth. I was born with cognitive abilities that suited me for research, and I was told they were permanently gone.
So, Where is the Blessing in this Trauma?
So, where is the blessing in this trauma? The first blessing is that I found I could teach others merely by giving of myself to them. I had nothing to gain or lose. It was never a transaction. It was, and is, empowered by my overwhelming gratitude for my family, creating an environment for me to help others. Gratitude. Not for the trauma but for the coping mechanisms my family created because of the ordeal.
Having demonstrated how gratitude can be derived from trauma for those of us whose life has been described, circumscribed, and bounded by trauma, gratitude still applies to us and everyone else. At my family’s school, we have found that if we focus on gratitude rather than giving behavior, our students experience both. I used to think that if we taught the behavior, we would induce its spontaneous adoption. If that ever worked, however, they learned gratitude as we preached behavior. Now, we tell half of our student body, that which is in primary school or younger, some of the things their parents gave them. Starting with life. And, over months, we ask them to tell us things others gave them that make their life better. We get the answers you might expect. Food, Love, cats, fish, baseball, and a deep loathing of the Yankees.
We Don’t Teach Giving. We let Them Experience It
We don’t teach giving. We let them experience it from us, their families, and their classmates and ask them to notice it. We have discovered that they start giving because they tell us others have given to them, even in pain, and they are grateful. From a social science perspective, you have got to ask, what is the outcome of giving? Is there a positive outcome? There is a faith-based book; since I am a person of faith, it sang to me. It is, however, good even if you are not a person of faith or a different faith. The Key to Everything by Hayford: https://amzn.to/3Y4987D
Or, if you don’t want another opinion, start by finding the good in your life or the good that came from trauma. Please write it down. And you don’t have to do much else. Practice gratitude daily, weekly, or systematically more than you have been doing.
It’s not magic.
It’s more of a habit.
There is no right way. It’s not even the only way. But it is a way, because giving IS the key to everything.
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About the Author www.pgmccoy.com
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