Gratitude Proficiency

Much of this post will come from a book by Gregg Easterbrook entitled The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse. In it, he explores how people aren’t any happier than they have been in the past -- in fact, in many cases they are less happy -- even though the quality of life we enjoy is far and away better than it has ever been in the history of the world. Mr. Easterbrook is not a member of the church, but his findings on happiness are pertinent to my topic. At one point in the book, he says this:

It might be said that the human condition is characterized by “complaint proficiency.” Whether through natural selection, God’s touch, or simply practice, human beings as a group are really good at complaining. We complain to our parents for bringing us into the world; complain to our teachers for educating us; complain to our bosses for employing us; complain to the merchants who feed and clothe us; complain to the lovers and spouses who embrace us; complain to the children we summon to join us; complain to the Maker for starting the world in which all this happens. About many things, especially injustice, we should complain. But we practice complaining so much, and on such minor issues, that we become too proficient: And then complain more, if only because we are confident we are good at it. Expressing gratitude or appreciation does not come easily to us because we practice it so little (118).

When we stop to think about it, it seems silly that we complain about waiting for half an hour in an airport for a security check in order to take a flight that will transport us hundreds of miles in a matter of hours when many of our ancestors walked thousands of miles over many months across the country, going maybe fifteen miles on a good day. Or that we complain about the incompetence of doctors when advances in medicine have allowed us to live longer and with greater health than ever before. Or when we complain about the price of gas when most of the people to ever live on this planet never had the means to travel from the town in which they were born. I even heard a friend complain about the hassle of registering for classes, saying that things might have been better back when you had to take a registration card to the school auditorium and navigate the crowd in hopes that you might get the classes you wanted, all because her internet connection was a little slow. We, the citizens of the 21st Century, are spoiled.

Paul prophesied to Timothy that in the last days people would be unthankful, and it doesn’t take much searching to see this prophecy fulfilled. Paul, by the way, mentions the unthankful in the same sentence in which he mentions the covetous, the boasters, the proud, the blasphemers, the disobedient to parents, the unholy, the trucebreakers, the false accusers, the incontinent, the fierce, the despisers of those that are good, the traitors, the heady, the highminded, those without natural affection, and those that are lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. So, the unthankful are not in very savory company.

Yet, it is still so much easier to see what we have to complain about than what we have to be thankful for. As President Henry B. Eyring said in the October 2007 General Conference:

the challenge to remember has always been the hardest for those who are blessed abundantly. Those who are faithful to God are protected and prospered. That comes as the result of serving God and keeping His commandments. But with those blessings comes the temptation to forget their source. It is easy to begin to feel the blessings were granted not by a loving God on whom we depend but by our own powers (“O Remember, Remember,” Ensign Nov. 2007, 67-68).

Elder Jeffery R. Holland said the following in his talk, “The Tongue of Angels”:
In all of this, I suppose it goes without saying that negative speaking so often flows from negative thinking, including negative thinking about ourselves. We see our own faults, we speak—or at least think—critically of ourselves, and before long that is how we see everyone and everything. No sunshine, no roses, no promise of hope or happiness. Before long we and everybody around us are miserable…As someone once said, "Even in the golden age of civilization someone undoubtedly grumbled that everything looked too yellow" (Ensign May 2007, 17-18).
Mr. Easterbrook says it this way:

Americans and Europeans live in an age in which most aspects of life are improving for most people, yet many feel progressively worse; in parallel, Americans and Europeans live in an age in which the collecting of grievances and holding of grudges is elaborately encouraged, while forgiveness and gratitude are looked down upon as quaint traits of Kansas farm wives from previous centuries.

Trends in the educational, legal, political, and media systems all urge contemporary men and women to view themselves as wronged by various forces real or imagined; to get angry and fight back; to fixate on any harms of which they may have been the target; to search out wrongs about which to become outraged. Americans and Europeans are further encouraged to even the score with those who may or may not have wronged them, using litigation or bad publicity or other means. The recent fads of children filing lawsuits against parents, or parents filing accusations against other parents regarding events between their children on the sports field or at school, are just two examples of this.

Another example that I have seen is in a recent film adaptation of the classic novel, The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexander Dumas. In the novel, Dumas’s protagonist, Edmond Dantès, learns that “lacking God's omniscience and omnipotence, human beings are simply not capable of—or justified in—carrying out the work of Providence. Dumas's final message…is that human beings must simply resign themselves to allowing God to reward and punish—when and how God sees fit” (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/montecristo/themes.html). The modern film, on the other hand, simply glorified vengeance.

Easterbrook is clear in saying that grateful people are not merely naïve about the injustices in the world. In fact,

in studies, people who score highly on various indicators of gratefulness also report strong awareness of the bad in their own lives and society. In fact, some research finds that grateful people are slightly more likely to be cynical than the population as a whole. But the grateful person may achieve the ability to be aware of life’s drawbacks and yet thankful to be alive, an attractive combination of views (240).

President Gordon B. Hinckley, said the following in his book, Standing For Something:

The absence of gratitude bespeaks a lack of appreciation and an ignorance that comes of an attitude of self-sufficiency. It expresses itself in ugly egotism and, frequently, in malicious conduct. Many selfish, arrogant, and usually miserable people in this world walk without gratitude. Perhaps they do so because they do not fully realize all they have to be thankful for (90-91).

President Hinckley’s strong words bring up an important question. What do we have to be grateful for? I won’t attempt here to come up with an exhaustive list, but I’ll mention a few things that may seem small, but shouldn’t be overlooked. The shelter over our heads, not matter how shabby it may be when compared to other more opulent homes and apartments, the clothes that keep us warm, regardless of whether they are in style or not, the food we have to maintain our strength every day, even if it is no more than Top Raman. And that's not even mentioning living in a time when the fulness of the gospel is on the earth, our knowledge and faith in God, the manifestations and guidance of the Holy Ghost, and most importantly, the Atonement of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

It is not difficult to cultivate gratitude in our hearts. Elder David A. Bednar recommended that we periodically offer a prayer in which we only give thanks and express gratitude. He invited us to, “ask for nothing; simply let our souls rejoice and strive to communicate appreciation with all the energy of our hearts” (Ensign Nov 2008, 43). I wonder how many of us heard this council, intended to do it, but still haven’t got around to it. Until recently, I found myself in that category. Then, I decided to make my gratitude prayers a more regular thing. I am a systematic guy, and I need a schedule for myself in order to do anything with any sort of regularity. So, I decided that on Sundays, I would do as Elder Bednar instructs in my morning and evening prayers. In just a few weeks, I have seen a difference in the spirituality of my Sabbath worship.

Now I would like to present some of the findings of “gratitude research” as described in Mr. Easterbrook’s book. He quotes Robert Emmons, a psychologist at the University of California at Davis as saying, “Gratitude research is beginning to suggest that feelings of thankfulness have tremendous positive value in helping people cope with daily problems, especially stress, and to achieve a positive sense of the self” (238). Recent studies on the topic have also shown that:

People who describe themselves as feeling grateful to others, and either to God or to creation in general, tend to have higher vitality and more optimism, suffer less stress, and experience fewer episodes of clinical depression than the population as a whole. This result holds even when researchers factor out such things as age, health, and income--equalizing for the fact that the young, the well-to-do, or the hale and hearty might have more to be grateful for.
Grateful people tend to suffer less anxiety about status or the accumulation of material possessions. Partly because of this, they are more likely to describe themselves as happy or satisfied in life.
In an experiment with college students, those who kept a “gratitude journal,” a weekly record of things they feel grateful for, achieved better physical health, were more optimistic, exercised more regularly, and described themselves as happier than a control group of students who kept no journals but had the same overall measures of health, optimism, and exercise when the experiment began. (If the idea of a gratitude journal sounds familiar to you, it should. President Henry B. Eyring spoke of keeping his own “gratitude journal” in General Conference only a few years ago. I have adopted this practice into my regular schedule as well, documenting all the things that I have to be thankful for from the previous week in my journal on Sunday.)

I see this gratitude research as another example of how God knows what is best for us before we learn why it is good for us, much like recent scientific findings that support living the Word of Wisdom.

God has always commanded his people to express gratitude. Paul wrote to the Philippians, “with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God” (Phil. 4:6). And the Lord said to the Latter-day Saints through Joseph Smith, “But ye are commanded in all things to ask of God, who giveth liberally…doing all things with prayer and thanksgiving” (D&C 46:7). In the April 2007 General Conference, Sister Bonnie D. Parkin said that, “[God] has commanded us to be grateful because He knows being grateful will make us happy. This is another evidence of His love” (Ensign May 2007, 35).

Yet, despite all of this evidence that gratitude is in our best interest, a voice still whines at the back of our heads. “It’s easy for people to be grateful when they have money, and a house, and cars, and are married. I’ll be grateful sometime in the future, when life will be good and I’ll have something to be grateful for.” I hope you see the danger in this “grass-is-always-greener” reasoning, but if you don’t, here is what Mr. Easterbrook has to say on the people who are most grateful:

Grateful people are not necessarily ones whom the world has showered with gifts. People of modest means, or who have suffered personal tragedies, nevertheless may report themselves as grateful, while the well-to-do, the good-looking, or the celebrated may exhibit little gratitude. “To say we should feel grateful is not the say that everything in our lives is necessarily good,” [the psychologist Robert] Emmons says. “It just means that if you only think about your disappointments and unsatisfied wants, you may be prone to unhappiness. If you’re fully aware of your disappointments but at the same time thankful for the good that has happened and for your chance to live, you may show higher indices of well-being” (240).

I would like to close with a story from the book Our Heritage that beautifully illustrates this very thing. If ever a group of people had something to complain about it was the members of the Martin Handcart Company, which in 1856 walked to the Salt Lake Valley. As you probably know, they were caught in an early winter. At least 145 people died, and many of the survivors lost fingers, toes and limbs. They suffered through starvation, fatigue, frostbite, and many other afflictions. Our Heritage tells this story of one of the survivors:

A man who crossed the plains in the Martin handcart company lived in Utah for many years. One day he was in a group of people who began sharply criticizing the Church leaders for ever allowing the Saints to cross the plains with no more supplies or protection than a handcart company provided. The old man listened until he could stand no more; then he arose and said with great emotion:

“I was in that company and my wife was in it…. We suffered beyond anything you can imagine and many died of exposure and starvation, but did you ever hear a survivor of that company utter a word of criticism?...[We] came through with the absolute knowledge that God lives for we became acquainted with him in our extremities.

“I have pulled my handcart when I was so weak and weary from illness and lack of food that I could hardly put one foot ahead of the other. I have looked ahead and seen a patch of sand or a hill slope and I have said, I can go only that far and there I must give up, for I cannot pull the load through it…. I have gone on to that sand and when I reached it, the cart began pushing me. I have looked back many times to see who was pushing my cart, but my eyes saw no one. I knew then that the angels of God were there.

“Was I sorry that I chose to come by handcart? No. Neither then nor any minute of my life since. The price we paid to become acquainted with God was a privilege to pay, and I am thankful that I was privileged to come in the Martin Handcart Company” (78).

This Thursday is Thanksgiving, and our minds will be turned to the many things that we should be grateful for. This is a good thing, and I hope we can all enjoy the hearty turkey dinners that will be prepared. My challenge, though, is that we not forget this gratitude once the turkey is gone and we’ve loosened our belts. Let us spend the rest of the year practicing “gratitude proficiency” instead of our customary “complaint proficiency.”