Here’s a fun and interesting practice my family stumbled across at Thanksgiving about ten years ago.
You know how it’s common for people to go around the table and say what they’re grateful for at some point during the meal? Well, I honestly don’t remember who started it, but someone suggested we do it like two truths and a lie. Except for this, we do two gratitudes and one ungratitude (sic) – two things we are thankful for and one thing we are explicitly not grateful for.
This was sorta revelatory in practice; it’s very freeing to not have to pretend everything is fine or that there aren’t things that piss us off.
But more than just freeing, it’s critical to experiencing genuine gratitude. This became clearer for me after drinks and conversation with the author, speaker, teacher, and all-around mensch Michael Meade, where something new opened up.
Michael presented the idea that there is a direct connection between gratitude and wholeness, and wholeness only comes when we acknowledge we are separate (or broken, or fractured, or not whole—use whatever language floats your boat here).
What became real for me was that when we are in the presence of gratitude, we are somehow made whole, and every time we experience being connected, the experience of gratitude is in the mix.
This is what I’ve come to so far about this (with musical references just for kicks).
I’m a Soul Man
This was all from Michael: for a large portion of humans, common to many spiritual mythoi (the plural for mythos - I just looked it up), our first break from wholeness comes from leaving the eternal and coming into this body, this life.
We leave the infinite and appear in this physical, finite body. We disconnect from the eternal and become mortal. We become objects in a world of other objects. We have edges, beginnings, and endings. We are distinct from everything we see and touch.
We are, for ourselves and each other, very clearly separate.
As we grow into each developmental stage, we experience a new version of our separation from each other. Different cultures have different practices for reintegration during some stages, (different rites of passage, for example). Still, in the end, we remain separated, fractured, and broken off from a greater whole.
This separation from the whole, this individualization, is more pronounced in industrialized places, given the emphasis we place on the power of the individual. So, if you are like me and live in one of those over-individualized areas, the opportunity for restorative wholeness is that much more fun (or challenging, depending on your POV).
Come together, right now…
So how exactly does gratitude make you whole?
I don’t quite know the precise “how,” although we will talk about it here, you can for sure feel it happening somatically, in your body, as an experience, and that is all I really care about.
Just so we are all on the same page when I speak of gratitude, I am not speaking of the idea, virtue, or concept. I am pointing to the experience in the body, what you feel when you humbly appreciate a person or a thing as a gift.
Next time you humbly appreciate a person or a thing as a gift, do so with intention, slowly, and check in on how you feel. You’ll discover, among other sensations, that you can feel a connection to the giver of the gift.
Gifts are given. If you receive a gift, it comes from somewhere.
In Western dualistic thought, this can be a little problematic as the recipient is somewhat subservient to the giver, and there is a clear hierarchy that complicates the experience of wholeness we are looking for.
But in Mahayana Buddhism, the idea of "threefold purity” incorporates the giver, the given, and the gift in this way:
1. The giver: The person who gives should not see themselves as the giver in an egoistic sense.
2. The given: The person receiving the gift should not be seen as separate from the giver.
3. The gift: The gift itself should not be seen as an object of attachment.
Selflessness arises in this understanding, as well as a loosening of attachments and a rising compassion in acts of generosity.
The very act of experiencing gratitude in this way connects the gift, the giver, and the given. Whenever we connect to another, whether a specific person, place, object, event, or the eternal, we’re no longer separate, at least for the moment.
The moment we allow ourselves to humbly (egolessly) appreciate the gift, we are in the presence of the giver, and the experience we call gratitude connects them with us. That connection helps make us whole.
Again, it is far easier (and more meaningful) to experience than talk about.
Well, hello there
Across all cultures, our methods of greeting one another are designed to produce, or at least allow for, that gratitude/connection cycle.
In the mad dash of Western-style hustle culture, greetings are not often experienced as moments of gratitude, but that’s only because we’re not present for what could be available.
Many cultures express the importance of (re)connection in their greetings.
The bowing in acknowledgment of one another in Asian cultures, hands in front of the heart with a head bow and a Namaste (the light in me honors the light in you) in India, the Māori tradition called Hongi (meaning “breath of life”) involves touching foreheads and noses.
Hugging, kissing (hands, cheeks, or lips), and/or shaking hands, all used in different contexts in the West, are each physical opportunities to (re)connect.
Obviously, anything can be done mindlessly, with no intention (and mostly, that’s how we do it). But when any of these are done with a commitment to humbly appreciate the gift of being with this other, we, and they, are being made whole again.
It's because gratitude and wholeness are so deeply experientially connected that we can start a conversation about “the cracks.”
Every little thing is gonna be alright.
The problem with not being present for greetings is that nobody gets connected, and nobody is made whole. Worse, because it is the very opportunity to connect, and we fail to do it, we end up feeling even more separated.
Think about it. The last time you asked someone, “How are you?” I’d bet they said, “Fine,” or maybe if they felt frisky, “Great.”
What did you say last time someone asked you?
Putting the lack of authenticity in the asking of the question aside for the moment- mostly, we don’t give a shit about how the person is when we ask - let’s look at the inauthenticity of the answer.
Not only did the person who asked not care, but since we’re predisposed to avoid discomfort, we don’t even look to see how we are at any given moment. Saying “fine” is sufficient to get them onto whatever they really wanted to talk about and you back to whatever you were doing before they asked.
A few things are happening here.
1. We think that acknowledging something isn’t working is somehow going to give it more life; we fear it will make it more real or worse,
2. We think we’ll be forced to do something about it.
We operate with all the maturity of a toddler who thinks we’ve disappeared when their eyes are covered during peek-a-boo. See no evil, hear no evil, and all that jazz.
But there is no path to gratitude through suppression or pretense, and unless we slow the fuck down and answer the question “How am I?” we rob ourselves (and them) of being made whole.
There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.
Gratitude is interesting because it is both the outcome and the source of connection, of wholeness.
It is, in essence, a positive feedback loop—a virtuous cycle where good begets good. We can exact more gratitude from our environment by tapping into the stream of opportunities for connection that always exist around us.
Because gratitude makes us whole, that which is broken, those places where we are separate ARE our path to gratitude.
Once tapped, we start that virtuous cycle—we see more of what there is to be grateful for and are made more whole. As we become more whole, we are empowered to look at new cracks, and so on.
Castles made of sand fall into the sea, eventually.
Nothing lasts forever, and some things require more maintenance than others.
Entropy is a physical law in our universe. Everything is always falling to its lowest potential energy level. Unless we put energy into something, it will fall apart. That’s not a problem; that’s the design. It’s not a bug; it’s a feature.
You and I will never get to where we are just grateful and connected as a default setting. Nothing operates in perpetual motion. For anything to work, we must intentionally act in ways that have it work.
Gratitude and being whole are no different.
But you can’t get there by pretending.
Oh, yes, I'm the great pretender.
I don’t have any inherent problem with faking it till you make it as a principle – I think it’s generally a sound approach to a lot of things. It’s a great tool to build confidence and stay in action.
But not when it comes to gratitude. Then it’s bullshit, and it’s detrimental. Putting icing on shit doesn't make a cake. It's still icing hiding shit.
Faking gratitude, as in saying everything is fine when it’s not, prevents us from seeing the cracks and facing our separateness, thus eliminating our shot of being made whole.
Take a moment and see if this feels true for you: Any place you experience a lack of gratitude, if you look, you’ll see a grievance, a complaint, or a resentment.
Look even more deeply, and you’ll see that your separateness is the cornerstone building block of any of those. Your grievance is about another. Your complaint is about some situation outside yourself. Your resentment is the function of something being done to you.
In each, there is a “you” and an “other.”
The lack of gratitude you experience in life is directly proportional to the degree to which you are disconnected.
But the path out is clear.
Bring yourself to one point of connection and experience gratitude or one point of gratitude and experience connection – either way you enter a cosmic feedback loop and get more of both.
A little less talk and a lot more action.
But this is a practice, a moment-to-moment remembering. It requires intentionality and demands our presence, neither of which is automatic.
The whole world of gratitude as it exists on IG and TikTok is simply a skin-deep, spray-painted version of toxic positivity dressed up with a new name – gratitude.
So, what is your access to authentic gratitude if it’s not writing a list of things you’re grateful for every morning before you rush out to do whatever you need to do?
Try acknowledging where you are without self-judgment. Here and now is always the place to start.
In many cultures, a fifth direction, the Center (the present moment), is added to North, South, East, and West. You have to start where you are.
A counterintuitive but highly effective way of connecting to gratitude is to first start with what you are not grateful for—and if not first, then certainly second.
Start wherever you start, but permit yourself to experience your experience, whether it is grateful or resentful, connected or separate, at peace or in turmoil.
Say my name.
If you can't say, name, or acknowledge it, you have no shot at transforming it, using it to make you whole, or just plain old ditching it.
This is not about wallowing in it – if you want, steal my family’s 2:1 ratio to start. It’ll keep you on the positive side but leave enough room to feel heard for whatever is not going well.
Once you have space to experience your experience (all of it, good and bad) without judgment, you can then look at what’s not working and choose whether to work on it or let it be.
To handle the harder parts of life, my Vipassana teacher gave me this thought I’ve found immensely valuable to use as a place to think from:
“This is the way things have come to be, for me, for now.”
By allowing yourself the space to experience your life exactly as it is and exactly as it is not, with both the cracks and the light, with all the accompanying feelings, you will naturally step into the upward spiral of gratitude and wholeness, wholeness and gratitude, on and on you go.
Happy holidays.
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