Is Gratitude the Key to Happiness?
As I write this, I’m 50 years old and seriously under-employed. I left my teaching position largely due to health concerns. I’ve had one heart attack. That was seven years ago. I had a heart attack while driving me and the family home after church one fine Sunday morning. I still remember that next Monday morning, waking up in the hospital with tubes and monitors attached to me, and thinking, “Well, at least I woke up.”
A couple of days later, the day after having my femoral artery snaked to look for blockages and cardiac damage, I got to take an actual shower for the first time since the previous Sunday morning. A few hours later, I got to go home and lay on my couch, facing the television with the remote control within easy reach. That was Wednesday, if I recall correctly. I was back to work that week (against doctor’s orders).
That first week, I did something I’d not done in a while. I felt grateful for waking up. I felt grateful for a hot shower. I felt grateful for a comfortable couch and a remote control that works. I felt grateful for the large number of people in my life who care for me. For the first time in a long time, I truly appreciated G. K. Chesterton’s observation, “When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”
I had been taking waking up in the morning for granted. I’d been taking couches, remote controls, and hot showers for granted. I’d even been taking my friends, family, students, and co-workers for granted. It’s perhaps a poor reflection on the quality of my character that it took a heart attack to shake the scales from my eyes so that I could see better the very many things I have in my life to be grateful for. I ought to be especially grateful for the things in my life that I’ve done nothing to earn but that I have regardless.
Which brings me to another of Chesterton’s observations: “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
There are so many things in my life that don’t have to be the way they are. They could be another way, but they’re not. How I cannot be struck by a sense of wonder by my good fortune? Sure, things aren’t perfect. Things will never be perfect. That’s not my point.
Consider food, for example. Why does it taste good? Is it inconceivable that the world would have arrived at an arrangement wherein food had no special flavor at all? Imagine that all food tasted like steamed asparagus. I like steamed asparagus, but I wouldn’t want all of my food to taste like it. But, if it did, I’d still eat. I’d have to still eat. Would I enjoy eating? Would anyone? I’m not sure about the answers to those questions.
But food does (or, at least, can) taste good, and I’m used to that, so I take it for granted rather than being filled with gratitude and wonder. That seems a shame because, if Chesterton is right (and he almost always is), gratitude and wonder are essential to happiness.
