Choosing Gratitude (11.20.24)

Think Thanks

When we find ourselves thirsty and stumbling through the desert of crushed expectations, we discover the limits of optimism. Something deep in our core rejects reassurances that “everything is going to be all right”. We know better — things can indeed go from bad to worse, and stay there. This is why I am intrigued by the notion of gratitude as an antidote to suffering. Gratitude does not bear the same inherent limitation as optimism. Optimism is hope placed in circumstances beyond our control (“endure a little longer until it turns”). But gratitude is the manifestation of hope in choice (“how do I choose to see the world today?”).

Victor Frankl believed in the role of agency in confronting turmoil. A psychologist and Auschwitz survivor, he observed that for hope to be enduring in the shadow of suffering, it must be grounded in the choice to strive towards something purposeful. Two millennia earlier, the New Testament writer Paul put it thus: “we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope”.

A different consolatory phrase — “every cloud has a silver lining” — captures the essential distinction between blind optimism and intentional gratitude when the tsunami of life comes crashing in. I was surprised by what I learnt when I investigated the phrase’s 400 year-old origin.

Photo by Kyle Johnson on Unsplash

• The idiom traces back to Comus, a masque (play) written by John Milton in 1634. Lost in the woods and separated from her brothers, the protagonist Lady chances upon a moonlit clearing: “there does a sable cloud/Turn forth her silver lining on the night,/And casts a gleam over this tufted grove”.

• Significantly, Lady considers this providence, rather than chance:“the Supreme good, t' whom all things ill/Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,/Would send a glistring Guardian if need were/To keep my life and honour unassail'd”.

• Lady (like Frankl and Paul) perceives that desperate circumstances are to be confronted with wisdom, as expressed through choice. Encountering the evil sorceror Comus, she detects his ulterior motives and responds: “Fool do not boast,/Thou canst not touch the freedom of my minde/With all thy charms…that which is not good, is not delicious/To a wel-govern'd and wise appetite.”

Eighteen years later, in 1652, Milton would lose his sight. That same year, he would lose his first wife Mary in childbirth, and six weeks later, his son John. It would be enough to break anyone. Still, two years later, Milton chose to start a new work. Blind, he continued oral transcription despite the subsequent devastation of losing his second wife, Katherine.

The epic poem, Paradise Lost, would become his greatest work.

“Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.”

 – John Milton (1608-1674)

Happy Thanksgiving, all - J