Gratitude

Today is the last day of the hackathon, meaning I’ve been working non-stop since 20-21 days ago to finish few things before switching jobs/contracts. I wanted to test my limits when started this mode. No shaving, no social life, it’s pandemic and lockdown anyway. But after 20-21 days I feel that’s close to my limit and I really need a day off.

So today I feel grateful this is over, that I can close this chapter and a new season begins, I’ve been thinking that it would be so easy to enumerate the things that went wrong this year or since the beginning of the pandemic, the many missed opportunities, the many failed plans… but instead I just want to feel grateful for the many small things that showed up along.

Instead of listing any of it, because few things are very personal, I would ask you to look back and see the silver linings in your life, too. While sometimes it appears that the world around us is spinning out of control, keeping still or grateful for what we have or receive can help us keep a healthy balance in life.

Is not merely spiritual or emotional, there is an old article from Amy Morin listing the benefits of being grateful:

• Gratitude opens the door to relationships. “showing appreciation can help you win new friends”
• Gratitude improves physical health. “Grateful people experience fewer aches and pains and they report feeling healthier than other people”
• Gratitude improves psychological health. “gratitude effectively increases happiness and reduces depression”
• Gratitude enhances empathy and reduces aggression.
• Grateful people sleep better
• Gratitude improves self-esteem
• Gratitude increases mental strength

Developing an “attitude of gratitude” is one of the simplest ways to improve your satisfaction with life

Amy Morin

I think a key part is in that quote is about developing that attitude.

In Italian people say grazie quite often, is part of the normal conversation, it seems until 1800 people didn’t say simply grazie but they used a different, longer idiom: vi rendo grazie = I pay you back with my gratitude.

That feeling of appreciation comes when you feel grateful from the depths of your heart, for something unexpected or undeserved. The head keeps memory of all things you give and receive, but the heart records the appreciation, humility, and generosity that one feels when you receive kindness.

That is where the development of an attitude of gratitude kicks in: you receive and your heart records and your heart feels, either at that point or later when you remember, you want to do something about it.

To illustrate the point: I haven’t seen my parents since before the pandemic started, there is no simple way to travel from here yet until maybe April next year. My parents and family have faced stricter lockdowns, isolation, infirmities… however I’m grateful they haven’t been left alone. Neighbours, close relatives, family have visited them from time to time.

Years ago my mother joined “Damas de Rojo” (humanitarian org) as volunteer, as she cannot visit hospitals now the only way she had to help was by knitting clothes for newborns. Without asking anything, now that organisation has been helping my parents at home too.

I feel really grateful about the many kind acts of service to them, as I cannot be with them now I want to serve and help others too.

We can lift ourselves, and others as well, when we refuse to remain in the realm of negative thought and cultivate within our hearts an attitude of gratitude

Thomas S. Monson

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash