Gratitude the Hard Way

by: Robert Wright  NY Times  11/25/2010

An aspect of Thanksgiving I’ve always had trouble with is the part about giving thanks. I’m not against gratitude, but things to be grateful for just don’t naturally spring to mind.

When I was a boy, various Southern Baptist ministers made what seemed like a concerted effort to cure me of this attitude by having the congregation sing the hymn “Count Your Blessings.” If you count your blessings “one by one,” the lyrics promised, you’ll see what “God has done.”

For my money, the song was too abstract to be persuasive. It didn’t mention any actual, specific blessings — unless you count an allusion to the coming heavenly afterlife, which I filed under “possible future blessings, assuming my conduct doesn’t condemn me to the hellfires, a scenario that can’t be ruled out.”

As the years wore on, I continued to show no aptitude for blessing counting, but then one day an unmistakably big blessing came my way. I discovered that there was a way to make a living by focusing on the negative side of life. It was called journalism. I had found what those ministers referred to as “a calling.”

My calling worked out pretty well until a few weeks ago, when I realized that I was slated to write a column that would appear on Thanksgiving Day. And I figured I couldn’t spend all 800 words talking about how ill suited I am to write a Thanksgiving Day column.

Then, on Monday of this week, I got another blessing. While listening to Philadelphia’s NPR affiliate, I heard an interview with the psychologist Robert Emmons, author of “The Psychology of Ultimate Concerns” and an advocate of systematic blessing counting. He recommends keeping a “gratitude journal.”

Emmons made gratitude journalism sound appealing. He said it makes you more attentive to blessings — and more optimistic, too. And, as the “positive psychology” movement that Emmons is part of has been known to stress, optimistic people live longer than pessimistic people. (To which my reply has always been: So the pessimists are right!)

I figured I’d give it a shot. I actually got out a pen and paper. The first few items were easy: daughters, wife, dogs. I kept going: true friends; collegial colleagues; in-laws whose home, where I spend Thanksgiving, has come to feel like home. Eventually I got to my aforementioned blessing: I’ve been able to make a living doing what I enjoy.

Oops! Since what I enjoy is focusing on the negative, this sent my mind back into the realm of nonblessings. For example:

(1) The New Start treaty — which just about every analyst, Democratic or Republican, says would make America more secure — is on the verge of being sunk by a few senators for partisan reasons. (2) This is symptomatic of intense political polarization, bitter division that is paralyzing our politics. (3) Some of America’s divisions, dangerously, are falling along ethnic lines. In particular, American Muslims are often the object of irrational fear and suspicion.

At this point I typically envision a scenario in which these pieces of bad news, along with others, find a horrible synergy that ushers in the apocalypse.

I’d like to think that it’s just me, but the truth is that never before have I heard so many people I know say they’re deeply worried about America — more worried than they’ve ever been, even.

But that’s no way to end a Thanksgiving column. So look at it this way: There are people preaching hatred and fear in America and abroad, and if they prevail, the world could go down in flames.

Wait, I didn’t frame that as positively as I meant to. Let’s try the flip side: If people preaching tolerance, understanding, and cool reason prevail, the world won’t go down in flames.

My point isn’t just that good may yet prevail. My point is that there’s a correlation between good prevailing and the world surviving in good shape. The more morally enlightened people get — the more they set aside their narrow perspectives and tribal passions and see how things look through the eyes of people from different religions, cultures, nations — the more orderly things will be.

We take this for granted because we were born into a world where it’s true. But, in principle, we could live in a world where chaos wins out even if we do summon the best in ourselves. Or, worse, we could live in a world where the triumph of evil is necessary for the maintenance of order.

But we don’t. In this universe, keeping life livable requires moral progress. Self-interest is aligned with truth and understanding, and self-destruction is aligned with ignorance and hatred. So it’s clear which team you should be on. And whatever the score at the moment, it’s only halftime. Thanks!