Giving Thanks
Why performative gratitude is bullshit and what the real shit actually looks like
Gratitude is a concept that gets a big workout in religious and spiritual circles, and the Thanksgiving holiday, despite its identity as a civic holiday, is one of the moments on the calendar where we find discussion of gratitude is mandated. We sit around a table laden with food and surrounded by friends and family and invariably, someone will want to ask what we’re all “thankful” for.
During the rest of the year, we might be encouraged to ponder gratitude in one way or another. The self-help crowd has long advocated the practice of “gratitude journaling” -- making a daily practice of identifying things that we are grateful for, usually in the form of three or five bullet points in a journal. The idea is that this daily practice will help you unlock a sense of appreciation for the good things in your life, and that appreciation will in turn multiply the good things in your life.
When we look at it this way, gratitude is not just a feeling. Gratitude is a stance we take up to meet the world. The idea being that if we are dutiful about acknowledging the things that are good in our lives, God or the Universe or whoever we think is running things will be so taken with our expression of gratitude that they will give us more.
The problem with gratitude when it is formulated this way is that it becomes performative. It becomes a thing we have to make a point of displaying outwardly so that the Powers that Be will find us worthy of further blessings. And thus the converse also becomes true: if we aren’t appreciative enough, then we won’t deserve good things.
We’ve all seen performative gratitude. It comes in two flavors. There is, of course, the person who’s working the Powers that Be for all they are worth. They figure if they are lavish with vocal expressions of gratitude to the Universe, the Universe will lavish good things on them. They see gratitude as flattery, of themselves and others.
This species of gratitude sometimes even becomes a tool to brag about what one has. These folks make heavy use of “#Blessed” on social media. The performance is how they mask that smug sense of entitlement, their belief that they should have the best of everything, with as little effort as they can get away with.
The other kind of performance is when you see people falling over themselves to express gratitude to others for things that they actually earned. This kind of gratitude is a kind of “covering the bases.” The performance of gratitude is used to hedge your bets against a capricious Universe that might snatch away what you’ve earned with your labor and your skill, because you’re not being grateful enough.
These folks often struggle with their own worthiness, and because they don’t believe that they are ever good enough or have done enough, they use gratitude as a way to prove to the Universe that the fruits of their labors, the things they make and do, are really deserved.
The idea that we have to demonstrate worthiness was taught to Americans in no small part by the Puritans, who at the time they established their colony in what is now Massachusetts, were considered an outlying doctrine with extreme theology about the relationship between mercy and justice. They believed they were part of God’s elect, chosen for a salvation that was personal to them, predestined, and irrefutable. While they technically rejected the idea that their salvation was based on their actions, in practice they created in their society a relentless need to demonstrate that they were part of God’s chosen by their external holiness. If you weren’t acting like one of the saved, then maybe you weren’t really one of God’s elect.
I’m not a fan of the Puritans for all kinds of reasons that I won’t get into here. A lot of what’s wrong with our late stage capitalist hellscape can be at least partially laid at the feet of the Puritans. It’s why when it comes to Thanksgiving, I try to eschew anything that lionizes their particular breed of toxicity.
I know, I’m making it sound like I think gratitude is a trap, a useless bit of modern hand-wringing that does more harm than good. But that’s not true at all.
Genuine gratitude, expressed authentically, is a tremendous thing. But how do we get past the modern American performative gratitude to find this genuine, authentic gratitude?
The secret of real gratitude is to recognize that gratitude is about fulfilling the energetic exchange of a gift that is given. And to do that you have to move past what you’ve received, and instead focus on gratitude as a way to deliver your own blessings in return.
Because just as matter is neither created nor destroyed, energy as it moves from place to place, thing to thing, person to person, is usually transformed by the experience. And it is at its best and most powerful when it is in motion. And the axiom of physics -- that each and every action has an equal and opposite reaction -- is also in play.
The Norse embodied it best in the rune Gefu. Gefu is a giant letter X, and when you start to explore its meaning the old saw from the Havamal about “a gift begetting a gift” is the first thing I think of. The actual verse reads: “No man is so generous he will jib at accepting / A gift in return for a gift, / No man so rich that it really gives him / Pain to be repaid.” (Auden & Taylor translation) Gefu is about the exchange of energy that comes when you are in a space of generosity and gratitude.
The ultimate goal of Gefu is balance. It is one of the few runes that is both horizontally and vertically symmetrical. It stands for the idea that gift giving is to be reciprocal. We have all been through the awkward experience when someone bestows a gift that is of inappropriate magnitude, whether too large or too small, or otherwise out of sync with the gift that it was supposed to be responsive to or the relationship context in which it occurred. There is a sense of embarrassment that comes from it. We know we have misread the situation, acted too boldly or not boldly enough. And it causes a rift between giver and recipient, one that can be hard to overcome.
Gefu is ultimately about generosity and exchange, and the necessity that such things be done mindfully, with a sense of sustainability, so that it may continue over time, and become stronger for it.
Indeed, if you stand and place your body in a configuration to match that of Gefu -- arms extending upward, legs spread apart the same width, you will notice how your body becomes a conduit of energy from above and below, and that energy moves very readily, easily, and most importantly, with balance. Gefu is that free flow between giving and receiving, and it feels really good. Feel the energy as it moves through you and notice how connected you feel between earth and sky, and how that flow, that connection, makes you feel more solid and whole.
That is the energy of true, authentic gratitude.
Because true gratitude is not only about receiving the gift given you, but returning that energy in equal measure. You are too busy accepting, transforming and returning the generous energy being pointed at you to worry about how it looks to an outsider or to Deity itself. You accept your role as a conduit to keep the gift moving, and in occupying yourself that way you leave no room to be self-focused or performative.
See, performance implies the existence of an audience and your awareness of it. Performance requires the meta moment of being aware you are watchable, and choosing to focus on the experience of the watcher as opposed to your own experience as a participant in the exchange.
When we are being authentic in our gratitude, we are caught up in that divine gifting energy exchange, and we don’t have any bandwidth left to fall into meta bullshit.
See, I believe in Deity that pours their love over the earth with profligate abandon. Whose blessings are there for all who are willing to reach for them, who summons us to engage with them not because we are “worthy” or “faithful” or “chosen” but because like all creation, we are loved as whole and complete beings in all our muck and glory.
We are loved even if we don’t yet recognize our worthiness. We have nothing to prove. We are already perfectly ourselves. We are not filled with “sin.” Contrary to the beliefs of Puritans, we are not here to prove our holiness, but to experience pleasure and connection. Whatever internal wherewithal it is we think we need or lack, we already have it, even if we can’t see it yet, even if the darker parts of us are hiding it from us.
We contain the infinite beauty and capacity of Deity, and when we give that energy away to each other, in the exchange of gift and responsive gift, the cycle of gratitude, we create everyday miracles of abundance and joy.
Gratitude isn’t the belief that we must make a performative display of thanks to make up for the fact we don’t deserve what we have. It is the acknowledgement that our humanity is built on the exchange of the energy of blessing. You blessing me, and me blessing you. And gratitude is the acknowledgement and full participation in that dynamic between us.
Gratitude is an active engagement with the people and things in our orbit that honors both them and us. Recognizing them as the active blessings they are to our lives. And recognizing that irrespective of whether we have done all the right things, whether we are all we want to be, we are worthy of those blessings. And as such we return them right back.
When you can step into that mobius strip of giving and receiving with unselfconscious joy, it’s amazing stuff. It’s the best kind of flow state, and it makes everyone feel stronger and better.
What does that look like in practice? It’s showing your mom how much you appreciated her cooking by helping to clean the kitchen after. It’s showing your brother how grateful you are for his help washing your car that you buy him that new set of drill bits you know he’s been eyeing. It’s giving lots of hugs and saying “I love you” whenever you can because you are super grateful grandpa is still alive to celebrate with you this year.
I want some of that with my turkey this year. Not some cornball one word answer of what I’m “thankful for” spoken around a table for the benefit of an audience. I want authentic full body contact gratitude, where I’m too busy participating in the exchange of good will and blessing to care how it looks to the Universe or anybody in it.
Give thanks. Receive thanks. Be part of that divine recognition of the cycle of blessing. That’s what I choose for Thanksgiving this year, and every year.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Blessed be, witches.
Coming from an indigneous Maya background, I not only agree with the sentiment but would like to add that indigenous frameworks for gratitude are ever present. This is not only from observing the beauty of nature but by observing the horrors of nature that native ancestors were much closer to. the cold hard facts about how inhospitable the universe is leaves all the room and reason for us to be authentically grateful without the need for a heavenly insurance policy.
Brava! You said out loud what I’ve been thinking and kvetching about. I never kept a gratitude journal because I felt like I was hypocritical even in private. I am very grateful for many, many things, people, and life. It’s the habit of being in the flow of giving and receiving that feels most appropriate. I’ve been talking a lot here about working for a government that knows that good democratic governance is about creating and maintaining a community of care.