Gratitude is good for you. According to one Harvard study, participants who kept gratitude journals for 10 weeks reported improved mood, increased exercise and fewer trips to the doctor’s office than those who focused on life’s aggravations for the same time period.
It doesn’t even require leaving the sofa. It doesn’t require buying a fancy journal from the bookstore, although you can if you want to. A $1.50 composition book from the drugstore is fine. So is an old, bendy, half-empty spiral notebook with the cover falling off.
This is not a prescription from an insufferable optimist dispensing sunshine. By nature I am a reclusive, melancholic realistic. Gratitude is for everyone, even for the pessimists, the suffering, those for whom life seems unfair.
If you are thinking, “What could I possibly be grateful for today?” read on. I am not suggesting you be grateful for suffering, loss, financial hardship, divorce or illness per se. But the practice of gratitude is a fiery torch that illumines contentment hiding in the cracks.
G.K. Chesterton wrote,
"Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it. It ought to mean appreciating what there is to appreciate in such a position; such as the quaint and elvish slope of the ceiling or the sublime aerial view of the opposite chimney-pots."
For an example of a dreary attic, take the first 10 years of my marriage.
- Three months before our wedding I came down with severe chicken pox (no health insurance.) My face swelled. I was registering for wedding china with a complexion not unlike a plague patient, circa 1350 A.D.
- Two weeks before the wedding, parked at a red light, we were hit by a drunk driver at 40 m.p.h. who thought we were the turn lane.
- Six weeks after the wedding bells, I had an ovarian cancer scare requiring emergency surgery.
- My first child was born by emergency C-section, during which the doctor accidentally nicked my bowel.
- I experienced a severe postpartum depression, followed by a many-years-long bad reaction to the antidepressant medication my OB so cavalierly prescribed.
- Our second child, a daughter, was born six weeks early, emergency C-section, and spent a touch-and-go week in the Level II nursery.
- Six weeks later, my husband was laid off on on my daughter’s due date. We had just bought a new home.
- When I was 34, my beloved father entered his final illness, endured nine months of suffering, and died.
- We tried to adopt a little boy. We failed.
- Our son was diagnosed with a chronic illness.
And this is just what I’m willing to share publicly. How does one find gratitude in this mess? By looking for the sublime views. There were several:
- It was a close one, but with a little extra makeup, the chicken pox did not make it into the wedding photos, and we survived the car accident relatively unscathed.
- I didn't have cancer! And if my emergency laparotomy had been six weeks earlier, I would not have had health insurance and likely would have faced bankruptcy.
- I will forever have the memory of my dear father as he rushed into pre-op, having just gotten off work, to kiss me before I went under the knife, and then his voice when I was rolled out of post-op, nearly shouting from the blurry sidelines that I was going to be okay.
- Despite reduced ovarian function, a year after the surgery I gave birth to a big healthy boy. My best friend from Minnesota was there, and my husband. My husband picked up the emotional slack during my postpartum for a year before I had the strength and presence of mind to mother my child.
- When my daughter was born early, I had a new circle of supportive friends who visited the hospital and brought a steady stream of meals to the house. Because my little girl spent a whole week in the hospital, I had a solid, blessed seven days of fortifying sleep before she came home. Postpartum depression averted.
- During my father’s illness, my little daughter and I were able to visit almost every day. I was by his side when he breathed his last.
No one who knew me those years would have described me as glowing with well-being. I cried a lot and people rolled their eyes. I did not skate through hardship like Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady.” But you don’t have to have a perfect life to find blessings in it.
G.K. Chesterton called gratitude the highest form of thought,
“happiness doubled by wonder.”
As much energy as you put into your hair and makeup, making healthy meals and exercising, put into the practice of wonder.
No matter what your circumstances, pull out that old notebook and write down a few things a day that you’re grateful for. Talk to yourself with a gentler, more appreciative voice.
Re-examine past pain in the light of gratitude and excavate the blessings that having been hiding there, waiting to be uncovered. Watch your sense of well-being bloom.
Sources:
Boost Your Health With a Dose of Gratitude. WebMd. Retrieved December 18, 2014.
http://www.webmd.com/women/features/gratitute-health-boost
In Praise of Gratitude. health.Harvard.edu. Retrieved Dec. 17, 2014.
http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/harvard_mental_health_letter/2011/november/in-praise-of-gratitude
Edited by Jody Smith