The Veil of Gratitude

At the end of 2016, after returning home from a perspective changing retreat in Ecuador about financial freedom, I started a weekly gratitude practice. At this retreat, we learned that practicing gratitude regularly was one sure way to cultivating longterm happiness (aka the longterm goal of financial freedom). I had attempted daily gratitude practice a few times before but it never stuck. The retreat talk emphasized the value of a weekly practice. The happiness research was totally right. Every single Sunday for almost 3 years, I would wake up, usually with a cup of tea, and write for a few minutes about the things I felt grateful for. The practice brought me great joy and showed me a short list of the things I really needed in life: meaningful connection and relationships, being in nature, thoughtfulness and care from others, and solitude. I was proud by how easeful the practice came to me. It never felt like a chore. 

Towards the end of last year, my gratitude practice came to a gradual, quiet halt. As I fully disconnected from my marriage, more space cleared away for my grief to come forth. Somehow, my feelings of gratitude started to bury themselves under piles of anger and pain being shoveled up and out of my heart. At first, when I started to snooze my calendar reminders on Sunday mornings, I made excuses and told myself I'd do it later. It wasn't until I looked at my gratitude journal recently that I noticed I hadn't written in it since early December. In a period of my life where gratitude should maybe be expected to come naturally, it just hasn't. Staring blankly at my last entry, I had to honestly admit, it's just fucking hard to feel grateful sometimes. It's hard to feel thankful when I'm unfolding blankets of anger this freely for the first time in my life. Despite this honesty, I noticed my judging mind coming full force. Why haven't I written since? How could I not feel grateful for all the love? Of course, in a year of such pain, I have felt many moments of gratitude to family and friends, to my spiritual practice and teachers, and to mother earth, especially. But my spirit of gratitude from previous years just doesn't feel the same. Sitting with gratitude in the way that I did prior no longer feels genuine, especially as I uncover more deeply the pain left unseen by the practice. I re-read my 3 years worth of gratitude and what I discovered was an earnest effort to find gratitude amidst deep suffering not fully felt or recognized at the time. I really did try to see the goodness in my life and marriage because there were things to be grateful for. But in some ways, my practice veiled my quiet suffering, reinforced my ego structure and conditioning, and contributed to false narratives about my world and who I needed to be in it. 

Today, I still believe in the value of gratitude practice and its power to cultivate wholesome qualities of the heart. I am finding a new relationship with gratitude however, with clearer eyes, and a much deeper recognition of the full spectrum of my human experience. How do I cultivate gratitude while acknowledging and allowing the full presence of my difficult emotions? What is gratitude in the context of suffering? Exploring these questions will hopefully make my practice more honest, resilient, and whole for the long run. 

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