Choosing To Be Grateful
Viktor E Frankl was an Austrian psychologist and Holocaust survivor and wrote a book about some of his experiences living in a concentration camp called Man's Search For Meaning. In this book, he talks about how there is a finite amount of pain and suffering that a human can endure before becoming desensitized and numb to the situation, to the point where an increase in suffering no longer has the same effect. He also talks about how a very few prisoners, who were going through the same hell as everyone else, nevertheless found it in them to share of their limited strength and comfort, who were able to look beyond their misery. This is a quote from his book: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way." Gratitude can be a spontaneous upwelling of emotion brought on by a sudden and dramatic change in our lives for the better, but gratitude is much more reliable when we make a deliberate decision to choose to be grateful in every circumstance of our lives. Our capacity to feel either pleasure or pain, happiness or sadness, elation or despair is limited. Our bodies and our minds and our souls numb themselves, they become full, satiated, stretched to capacity. But gratitude is a deliberate choice to open our mind and our heart again. There is no palace so grand, no bank account so full, no health so cultivated, no fame and fortune so richly amassed that misery cannot creep in. And on the other hand, there is no prison so dark, no illness so debilitating, no pain so intense that peace and light and hope cannot creep in. Happiness and sadness, pleasure and pain, peace and chaos, hope and despair can find us wherever we are. I know that the last thing that someone trapped in a pit of despair wants to hear is to buck up, to fake it til you make it, to turn that frown upside down and have an attitude of gratitude. It can't be that easy, right? The thing about gratitude is that it's so versatile and resilient and it is stronger than the strongest chains, deeper than the deepest pit, and also softer than the softest breeze and more delicate than the most fragile soap bubble of happiness. Our fortunes will rise and fall a thousand times, and if we allow our happiness to be tied to our present circumstances, then we will be confused and disappointed and bitter a lot of the time. But if we spend the time and the effort to from moment to moment make the choice to be grateful, then no matter our circumstances our life will be filled with gratitude. We can't choose when life is going to kick us when we're down or when it's going to help us get back on our feet, but we can choose to be grateful.
