As has become habit, DearLilyJune, wrote something that made me think.
In her post she referenced a NY Times article (link), “The Selfish Side of Gratitude” by Barbara Ehrenreich. Ehrenreich’s view is that we practice gratitude in a way the self-elevates and rarely involves communication or interaction of any kind.
“All you have to do is generate, within yourself, the good feelings associated with gratitude, and then bask in its warm, comforting glow”. I have not read several self-help, self-love books, but I have read a couple. These books have encouraged me to acknowledge the good things that have happened to me and write, or state, the things I am grateful for. I have never been coached to interact or communicate directly with the donor.
I can, for example, meditate on how grateful I am that my parents insured I received first-class education without ever communicating this to my parents. Yet, because I have acknowledged it to myself, I am showing gratitude without having ever showed it. And because I have done this, I am allowed to feel better about myself because I can say that, yes, I am a grateful person. Ehrenreich is saying that practices of gratitude can be more internal than external–agreed, they can be.
I do take issue with her comment, “Saying grace to an abstract God is an evasion, there are crowds, whole communities of actual people, many of them with aching backs and tenuous finances, who made the meal possible”.
Saying grace before a meal is not practice I follow unless I am sharing a meal with someone who does practice thanksgiving. “Thanking God is an evasion” is a comment that is authored on a misunderstanding of a key attribute of God; He is omni-everything. He has made all things possible. For a believer, these events made possible through farmers, communities, etc, are all also made possible by God–to thank God is to thank them.
And for the purposes of practicality, how long of prayer would it be if we went down the list of people (and animals!) who make meals possible? Her ‘complaint’ seems naive. Imagine a family who says grace before a meal but the mother, who cooked the meal says, “uhh, aren’t you going to thank me too?” Joel Osteen would argue that it is through God that the mother was able to cook the scrumptious meal.
The next point is when Ehrenreich says, “The real challenge of gratitude lies in figuring out how to express our debt to them, whether through generous tips or say, by supporting their demands for decent pay and better working conditions”. I completely agree with the last two points, those are concrete ways of communicating external gratitude. But, generous tips? I probably wouldn’t have flagged this in my thought process if Ehrenreich had not also raised the issue of money when she criticizes the Greater Good Science Center for not funding “projects to directly improve the lives of poor individuals but [has] spent a great deal […] to improve their attitudes”.
I struggle to articulate my thoughts on this but to suggest that we express our debt via generous tips seems conflicting, and again, someone could argue condescending. A generous tip can express gratitude but an individual could also interpret a generous tip as pity. Her suggestion also assumes that generous tips are universally accepted as a shows of gratitude rather than, for example, not being on the phone during an order, or not being rude or demeaning to a waiter or waitress.
As I said, I do appreciate the context around Ehrenreich points. When practicing gratitude is an only an act between you and yourself, are you really practicing gratitude? But! If you can’t practice gratitude internally, how do you practice it externally? If I can’t acknowledge that you have done something good, can I express it to someone else?
Just like love, I think gratitude starts with oneself.
& Other Long Stories 
There was a lot in the Ehrenreich article that I took issue with, and I think your critique is incredibly articulate when you write in response to her claim “thanking God is an evasion” that “For a believer, these events made possible through farmers, communities, etc, are all also made possible by God–to thank God is to thank them.”
In my opinion and system of belief, it works both ways: To recognize the hard labors of the men and women who worked to make your meal possible is also to be grateful to their Creator, just as to thank God, as you say, is to thank them, too.
I don’t see internal gratitude and external gratitude as being mutually exclusive qualities, either. I think you can mentally ruminate on the gifts that have made your life good while also physically articulating your thankfulness to the gift giver (be that giver God or man or the manifestation of one through the other).
As someone who has really struggled financially in her lifetime–who has had to work multiple jobs at some points and whose parents did not pay to put me through college–I will say that tips are extremely important. What one can give, one should give, but only if it’s given willingly, from neither a sense of obligation nor a hope of reciprocation. A kind demeanor won’t feed a waitress’s children. 🙂
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Thank you! – I completely understand (and agree with) your point on tips. I took on a critical view of her point on tips because of her comment on money – It didn’t align with her previous comments for me. And you’re absolutely correct, kindness doesn’t pay the bills. But I think a customer who shows non-kindness is also far less likely to show gratitude through a fair/generous tip. Thanks for the inspiration to write this!
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Agreed! Ehrenreich’s an interesting character. She’s made most of her own money through the book Nickel & Dimed, for which she pretended to be “poor” to expose the problems of “poverty” to the upper and middle classes. I’ll ALWAYS take issue with that.
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