How does a mother whose children were murdered find peace? Can she ever feel grateful? Does gratitude promote emotional health? How?
Julia (name changed) was one of the participants in a research on parents whose son or daughter had been murdered. Loss of a child through death is one of the hardest and most painful experiences anyone can go through. It is emotionally draining and traumatising in the extreme. The trauma is multiplied when this loss is due to human malice, as happens in a murder.
One criteria for selection of subjects for this research was that they had experienced a positive transformation in their lives because of this trauma. In other words, these subjects had been able to turn the tragedy on its head and create out of it something good and beautiful.
The research question was: What are the processes and resources that enabled these parents to turn the tragedy into a gift, to turn their trauma into a positive source for growth and transformation?
A surprising finding was that one of the resources that enabled each of the participants to grow out of their pain and create something beautiful out of the tragedy was thankfulness. We might wonder what there is to be thankful for when someone has murdered one’s son or daughter. Yet each one of the participants had so many things to be grateful for.
Among these participants the one who could have turned out to be most bitter and resentful was Julia. Yet, she was, according to the researcher, the most grateful of all the participants. She had only two twin daughters. Both of them were murdered, supposedly, by her estranged husband the same night. Despite this awful tragedy, Julia found much in her life for which to be thankful. That thankful attitude had enabled her to overcome her trauma and grow though her pain and loss. This is what she said:
“I am so fortunate that . . . that it just amazes me, you know. . . . I am so fortunate. . . . I could not have had them. What they brought into my life is so wonderful and precious, that I really am blessed…. And I am lucky to have those memories now. They are still in my life. Those bullets didn’t take those away. . . . And I have tons of gifts in my life. You know, in the balance of my life, yeah, there is a lot of tragedy, but look at the happiness I’ve got, look at the neat things there are in my life.”
Emotionally healthy persons have genuine appreciation for life and its blessings. They experience spontaneous joy and deep satisfaction in living. They are sensitive to the wonderful things happening in them and around them—the basic miracles of life. While recognising the limitations that life imposes on them, and despite the troubles and tragedies they experience, they are also able to see and appreciate the blessings in their life. They live gratefully.
Gratitude is much more than saying “thank you” to someone who has given us a gift or helped us in some way, or to God for a blessing received. Gratitude, as defined in research literature, is “the capacity to feel the emotion of thankfulness on a regular and consistent basis, across situations and over time.” In other words, gratitude is a disposition that accompanies us through good times and bad; when things go well and things wrong, through success and failure.
Psychological and medical research has found that gratitude is a virtue that has enormous consequences for physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. For example, it has been found that grateful people fall sick less often, and even when they fall sick, they recover much faster than ungrateful people. And more important, grateful people live significantly longer than the ungrateful ones.
The reason for the health benefits of gratitude, research tells us, is that gratitude is seen as the disposition that most creates positive emotions in us. These positive emotions, in turn, strengthen our immune system and help us to ward of disease. They increase our resilience.
Positive emotions also lead to healthier patterns in cardiovascular activity. In other words, positive emotions protect the heart.
The spiritual benefits and power of gratitude can be gauged from the saying attributed to the great fourteenth century Dominican mystic Meister Eckhart. He said: “If the only prayer you say in your entire life is ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.”
For us to feel grateful we need to cultivate what Albert Einstein called a sense of “awe and wonder”—an ability to be amazed by the daily miracles that happen around us. He wrote: those “who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe are as good as dead.” Further, “There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle.”
The renowned catholic theologian Karl Rahner was once asked, “Do you believe in miracles?” His reply, “No, I don’t.” But he did not stop there. He continued: ‘I rely on them to get me through each day.”
Caroline Duia has a lovely song entitled “Miracles.” Its lyric speaks of the kind of miracles that Rahner refers to: “There are miracles every moment… each day is a miracle with its countless blessings. …Yes, it’s a miracle to be alive and be living… to see the golden sunrise, to hear the birds sing, to feel the gentle breeze, to see the wind dancing in the trees… Isn’t it a miracle that just when you feel lonely and blue, then an unannounced friend comes to sooth and comfort…?”
Life is full of little miracles that should truly make us stand in awe and wonder and lead us to gratitude and reverence. Unfortunately, we take too many things for granted and only see them as very mundane events rather than amazing miracles.
Emotionally healthy persons are aware of these daily miracles, are able to stand in awe and wonder before them and feel grateful.
Emotionally unhealthy persons, on the other hand, mostly live resentful lives. It’s hard for them to see these daily miracles. They have much to complain about, blame and find fault with. All this evokes lots of negative emotions.
These negative emotions impact their general dispositions and colour their relationships. These undermine their immune system, reduce their resilience and make them vulnerable to disease and shorten their lifespan.
One easy means to cultivate gratitude is the daily practice of the Examen of Consciousness that is at the heart of Ignatian spirituality. We take a few minutes at the end of the day to sit quietly and allow memories of the good things—the little miracles—that have happened during the day to come into awareness and we let our heart fill with thankfulness. Gradually we will become more and more sensitive to these and live gratefully—and enhance our emotional health and our happiness.
Introspection
- What does this piece on “Living Gratefully” evoke in me?
- Is my life characterized more by gratitude and appreciation or by negativity and resentment? Why and how?
- Complete the following open-ended statement in as many ways as possible: “I am thankful for….”
- Then spend a few minutes expressing gratitude to God.
- What else can I do to live more gratefully?
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