(Starting with this in convo as a "personal experience/opinion" thread; it could develop Head Shop- or Temple-wards as it progresses)
Hydra, here, makes the offhand comment that ze doesn't think that gratitude is a useful thing to feel about anything. Ze says, to be precise: Oh, and IMO "grateful" isn't a useful emotion for anyone to feel about anything.
I expect we may have different ideas of what it means to feel "grateful". I am put in mind of something I heard a Rabbi say recently about the concept of "Dayenu." Dayenu means (more or less) "it would have been sufficient," some of the Jews and Jewish-ish people here probably know from a Passover favorite. Reb Gershon put it another way, one that's probably also familiar from elsewhere: "If he would only have cleared the table, and brought out plates, it would have been enough. If he would only have cleared the table and brought out plates but not set the table, it would have been enough. If he would only have set the table but not expressed appreciation of the meal, it would have been enough. If he had expressed appreciation of the meal but not offered to help with the dishes, it would have been enough. If he would only have offered to help with the dishes but not rinsed them and loaded them in the dishwasher, it would have been enough. And that he has rinsed them and loaded them in the dishwasher (even though he has not actually put in soap and turned the dishwasher on)... it's enough!"
I'm mindful for one thing of the Rebbe's very traditional ideas of relationships, family, and work-sharing, and it's a bit irritating to me even as I recognize that it's comforting and humorous to those listeners who are in traditional heterosexual etc etc etc. But I take his basic point... when you are grateful for the things your partner gives you, then the things that you would want from them but don't get, don't seem like huge crises. Resentment doesn't build up and eventually destroy the relationship. And that's no little thing to be grateful for.
Not just in love relationships, but professional ones or casual ones. Feeling grateful often leads to expressing appreciation, and it's well known that expressing appreciation helps to make all kinds of relationships smoother. To put it another way... imagine if the significant people in your life felt no gratitude or appreciation for all the many ways you contribute to their lives. How encouraged would you feel to maintain your side of the reciprocal relationships that keep humanity as a social organism functional?
More personally, I've found that feeling grateful helps me be happy. I'm not talking about having the attitude of "feel grateful for what you have (as opposed to all the many things you don't have, you poor sod)," I'm talking about a general attitude of gratefulness in relation to the world around me. The alternative, it seems, is continuous dissatisfaction, which I already know puts me at risk of depression. The former empowers me to do whatever I can to help make my life, and those of others, still better; the latter tends to cause me to stagnate. I'm not sure what more useful emotion than gratitude there is, actually... and that's assuming that emotions should be useful in order to be good. |
