Stoic Meditation #3 - Gratitude
Brilliant Advice from Amy Dickinson and the Importance of Gratitude
In the calculus of human behavior, this is pretty much a rock solid equation:
Your capacity for gratitude is inversely proportional to your sense of entitlement. – Mark Brooks
Keep this in mind as you read the linked letter submitted to an advice column in the Chicago Tribune. The sources are suspect (advice column and main stream media), but I've experienced enough of the attitude expressed by Angry in Philadelphia to consider the letter plausible. Read and weep...
We told him not to come to the wedding, but we still wanted his money
Many years ago I had a very powerful experience involving $300. My first wife was in the middle of one of several cycles of high dose chemotherapy endured during her 10 year battle with cancer. During those times, I was more than busy with working two jobs as well as taking care of her physical needs, which were considerable. I could not have done this without the help of family along with many good and several very close friends. (A and B, thank you, again!) At the end of one of those days, after probably a half dozen people had stopped by to help, I set about getting the dogs fed and scrounging something for myself. There on the hallway table, with no accompanying note, was $300 in cash. At the time, the way we were stretching things, $300 meant two weeks of food.
I remember holding this cash, wondering what to do with it, and thinking someone must have forgot they set it there or otherwise mislaid it on their way out the door. I wasn't sure who all had been there during the day or even if I knew them. That's how open the door was some days. I did think about discretely making a few queries. Had it been there all day? Did multiple people contribute? In the end, I didn't touch the stash for a long time, thinking someone would claim it. No one ever did and eventually it joined the constant outflow of money feeding the healthcare industry. But I vowed to pay this forward when I could. And so I have, many times over. And I'm not done yet.
I cannot help but feel sad for the impoverished empathy resident in the mind of Angry in Philadelphia without so much as a clue to her situation. Based on her set of expectations and sense of entitlement, I hope she never needs help from her fellow echo chamber dwellers. I don't think I'm too far off the track to say a fundamental ailment in American culture is a profound lack of appreciation for what we have and a near complete absence of gratitude for what's available to us with phenomenally little effort. If we would but direct a fraction of the usual outrage energy toward crafting a better life on our own terms, perhaps that would be sufficient to turn the tide. Intuition tells me, however, as a culture we're too far gone.
Over the years, Q and I have worked out an implicit heuristic for dealing with ungrateful people. If we give our time or money toward enhancing someone else's good times without so much as a verbal "thank you", we're less generous the next time. After a few repeats, we withhold our generosity altogether. Of course, when someone needs help, we give and expect nothing in return, no matter how many times help is needed. If the need involves giving money, we prefer to give anonymously and, if possible, directly - without any intermediary like a non-profit or GoFundMe-type of organization.
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others. - Cicero
P.S. I am very grateful to you for reading my scribblings. Thank you!
If you have any questions, need anything clarified, or have something else on your mind, please use the comments section or email me directly.
Photo by Niklas Kickl on Unsplash