AN OUTLOOK ON GRATITUDE

INA ALEXEIJ

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MOTTO:

“In the New Testament, religion is grace and ethics is gratitude.”

THOMAS ERSKINE1

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.
Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the
flame within us. […] To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take
nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kind that will stand
behind the action. Nothing that is done for you is a matter of course. Everything
originates in a will for the good, which is directed at you. Train yourself never to put
off the word or action for the expression of gratitude.”

ALBERT SCHWEITZER2

“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, <thank you>, that would
suffice.”

MEISTER ECKHART3

“Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.”

FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD4

“Gratitude is the disease of dogs.”

STALIN5
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1
http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_gratitude.html;
2
Ibidem;
3
Ibidem;
4
Ibidem;
5
http://enciclopedie.citatepedia.ro/index.php?c=recuno%BAtin%FE%E3.
Gratitude… gratitude is a concept. Gratitude is a feeling and an emotion. Gratitude
is a state of mind – state gratitude6. Gratitude is a trait – trait gratitude7. Gratitude is
a virtue. Gratitude is innate. Gratitude is predetermined. Gratitude is pavlovian.
Gratitude is not just human. Gratitude can be acquired by learning. For this reason,
gratitude is a motivator. Gratitude can be acknowledged. Gratitude is expected. For
this reason, the receipt of gratitude can develop pathologically as the need to
indebt the other. Gratitude and its expectances can be unethical. Gratitude is self-
implied. Gratitude is expensive. The status of gratitude is immanence. Gratitude is
easy… Genuine gratitude is ethical. Gratitude is the foundation of well-being.

As a concept per se, gratitude can be discussed from such variegated perspectives,
that it becomes difficult to draw up an exhaustive point of view. Gratitude and
subjectivity are intertwined and hence, the aspects of gratitude range to as many
experiences as the human soul and conscience can encounter. The polyvalence of
the concept, along with the multitude of human perspectives upon life, as well as
the variegated nature of life perceptions, stand at the basis of the difficulty to draw
up a single definition of gratitude. It might be looked at as simple thankfulness.
However, a minimal definition is not satisfactory, due to the simple fact that
gratitude is a state of mind that draws its resources both from the affective and the
cognitive, from the subjective and the objective levels of perceptions upon life and
inter-human relations.

This state of mind is not one that belongs solely to human experience. Humanity is
associated to reason as it was concluded by Descartes. The human being is
auxiliary to the verb “to be”, as well as to reason. However, the auxiliary of
gratitude is also “to be”… to be grateful. Paradoxically, “to be grateful” is not
implicit to reason. Non-human animates, namely animals are entities who can
sometimes teach us what genuine gratitude means and implies. The essence of
gratitude seems to hence range back to the beginnings of time, to “collective
unconsciousness”8, as C.G. Jung would define it. This is merely due to the fact that
gratitude as one of the primordial states of mind was scientifically probed probe by
A. Pavlov, within the dog experiment.

6
In the 21st century, adjacent to the already in-rooted study of tribulations, psychology started focusing on the
study of positive emotion. The feeling of gratitude is one of the main reference points in the study of positive states
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of mind and the syntagm used is “state gratitude”.

7
Equally, in order to get to the bottom of all reactions that state gratitude can arise in human beings, the essence
of psychological studies centered around evaluating how many people experience gratitude, how often and for what
reasons. It is a predetermined latent trait that
develops in time, according to the environment individuals develop in;

8
Cf. Jung, C.G. (1997), Tipuri psihologice, Bucuresti: Humanitas.
The pavlovian experiment is one that actually tackled on one of the primeval human
tribulations, as consciousness seems to be built on conditioned actions. In this case,
gratitude is one of the factors in the cause-effect equation and the aspect of
gratitude as ethics can now be discussed as virtue and ethics, once reason
intervenes. Human gratitude is far more complex than the predetermined state of
mind that we are born with. Gratitude as a virtue can be cultivated through
experience and is a complex element of the emotional and of truthfulness towards
oneself, made up of sincerity, comprising the predetermined factor of thankfulness,
the acknowledgement of the good-deed and the possibility of drawing a cleavage
between conditioned thankfulness and genuine gratitude. Perhaps, in a
predominantly pragmatic environment, genuine gratitude can enlighten the human
spirit and open one’s eyes towards genuine values of human existence.

To give an example of the position of gratitude and virtue in general, in the frame of
the 21st century, September 11th can be looked at as the epitome of the unraveling
of today’s values. In order to shake a society’s core, its values must be stricken. The
reference points of nowadays society were located in the World Trade Center –
namely, banking and money, the Whitehouse – namely, the yearning for power and
the Pentagon – namely, the military and the ache to conquer… The question is
whether in the era of fast-paced technology, banking and military, genuine
gratitude and virtues in general can still be experienced, or whether they belong to
the canonical realm of enlightened minds. A sure thing is the fact that nowadays,
despite all its illnesses, Western society stands as the epitome of freedom and
wealth. However, a large question mark can be raised from this point of view: is
liberty not the catalyst for the lack of gratitude? Oftentimes, the lack of gratitude
seems to be the pathological side of freedom. Examples are various and multiple.
The recent history of Eastern and Western Europe stands as the defining equation of
the above-stated: while an Eastern European living under the Iron Curtain was
grateful for “a small bag of olives” and hence willing to share it with those less
fortunate who were not able to acquire such “riches”, a citizen of Western Europe
could not even conceive paying any special attention to a bag of olives9:

„....Thus, the first level of distinction between Communist East and free West is
reached in terms of gratitude: the Eastern European felt happiness upon purchasing
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olives, while the West European did not feel anything [...]one of the paradoxical
effects of poverty was the monumentalization of minimal opportunities that might
bring upa feeling of content. [...] The difference between the two parts of Europe

9
Pleşu, Andrei (2007), Despre bucurie în est şi vest şi alte eseuri, Bucureşti: Humanitas
 implied inevitable, funny connotations for the blessed individual who might have
had the chance to travel towards the West. Upon my initial contacts with the
capitalist market, I arose the perplexity of several mercahts, by posing questions
that were unconcievable to them, as an aftermath of their lifestyle. When entering
for instance in a bakery, I was used to constantly ask <Do you have bread?>...
Firstly, the person I would come into contact with, would generally speechlessly
look at me. Was I joking? Was I an idiot? Was I mocking at them? <Of course we
have bread! What else would you assume we sell here?!> Of course, they wouldn’t
know that within the limits of my experience, the existence of bread in a bakery
was not self-implied at all...”10

Such experiences might make us all reconsider the parametres of gratitude and
what we should generally be grateful for.

Moral philosophy11 and religion are fields in which gratitude as virtue and passion
has always been tackled. Nevertheless, psychology has lately began to focus on the
study of “state gratitude” as a positive state of mind, but also a status of pathology
since gratitude can arise tribulations within the psyche. Gratitude may mean
control, placing the subject in debt, conditional acting.

It is clear that the foundation of the human spirit has not been modified. It is based
on reason and innate values that can however, be artificially modified in time, by
means of the environment it develops within. Simplicity is the basis of human
condition. Virtues of simplicity that go back to illo tempore are still there when we
are born, however they must all be cultivated and developed. Otherwise, these
values find themselves in conflict with variegated segments of the material level, to
the point when they seem to be lost. From a psychological perspective, in her work
“Envy and Gratitude”12, Melanie Klein draws a sketch of the child’s predetermined
levels of consciousness, at birth. The child goes through different phases of
development, in relating to itself, to the outside world and to the people close to
them, ranging from the so-called “schizophrenic” behavior, that Lacan called the
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“mirror behavior”, to the Oedipal stage. Among these states of mind, gratitude also

10
Andrei, Plesu (2007), Despre bucurie in est si vest si alte eseuri, Bucuresti: Humaitas, pp. 11-15;
11
Cf. the work of Adam Smith (namely The Theory of Moral Sentiments, originally published in 1790);
12
Klein, Melanie (2008), Invidie şi recunoştinţă şi alte lucrări, Opere Vol. 2, Bucureşti: Editura Trei.
begins to bud, in an initial pavlovian manner. Nevertheless, once occurred, this
predetermined factor must be cultivated and educated, in order to become an
element of virtue that later, in the process of development of the individual’s inter-
human relationships, may make the grown-up child be thankful for acquiring it.

One may not only be thankful to another, but may also be thankful for receiving
another’s gratitude, for “The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be
appreciated”13. Thus, two situations can be encountered: on the one hand, gratitude
as thankfulness, or appreciation, a positive emotion or reaction in acknowledgment
of a benefit that the individual has received or will receive (be it genuine or
conditioned). On the other hand though, the reaction of the counter-part occurs: the
need for attention, or the dependence to receiving appreciation – people who act to
the benefit of others conditionally, as an aftermath of their constant yearning to get
attention and gratitude. The positive or invalid manner of developing these states,
namely the state of desire to control by indebting people in gratitude, or showing
conditioned gratitude as the further hope towards future rewards, depend on the
surrounding environment that the human being develops in and how these cravings
are cultivated throughout their development.

Studies in sociology and psychology have had as results the issuing of theories
concerning the positive state and trait gratitude, as well as indebtness. A large
amount of importance is being paid to the study of the effects of gratitude, for
commercial purposes. Nowadays, human resources are the main resources that
society cannot do without. Hence, studies related to the cultivation and uses of
human resources are crucial. This is the reason for which, gratitude itself is being
studied as a positive human reaction, even in relation to marketing strategies. The
positive reactions gratitude arises are used even for commercial purposes. 21st
century consumerist society has transited from the canonical use of human
emotions towards divinity to the exploitation of human reactions to its benefit.
Studies show that manifest gratitude of merchants increase their sales, as people
tend to go back to those who show gratitude to their customers14.

All in all, gratitude seems to stand at the basis of social well-being. It helps
individuals relate better, it develops interpersonal relations, as well as the personal
affective and cognitive levels of individuals15.
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13
http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_gratitude.html, apud William James.
14
Rind, B. & Bordia, P. (1995), Effect of server's "Thank you" and personalization on restaurant tipping, Journal of
Applied Social Psychology, no. 25, 745-751.
15
Studies in somatic psychology have shown that grateful people find themselves in a better psychological state,
to the point in which they are able to even sleep better, due to their ability to relate to others through gratitude.
They have fewer problems, because by being grateful, they feel content and feel they can relate to others if they
Gratitude is a reciprocal two-way emotion. One shows gratitude and the benevolent
individual receives the warmth of one’s gratitude, acknowledging thankfulness.
Hence, benevolent actions are encouraged and from this perspective, gratitude is a
motivator. The motivation is in itself double-folded: on the one hand, gratitude
motivates the beholder, to be thankful for what they received, being assured that
the well-being cast upon the benevolent individual will later stand as a pillar of
support, should support be requested again. On the other hand, the benevolent
individual is motivated to further act to the unconditioned benefit of others, once
they see their actions are acknowledged and gratitude is shown. A sincere “thank
you” can be the catalyst for further sacrifice and while sacrifice per se can fill one’s
heart with happiness to help the other, gratitude is the sublime expression of the
beneficiary’s thankfulness.

Gratitude is the element that determines the person next to us to acknowledge the
fact that they are not being taken for granted. Also, even if gratitude is never shown
to a benevolent person, the spirit of sacrifice will fill their spirit with happiness, in
the absence of thankfulness. Sacrifice must not be conditioned. We must remember
that different people show gratitude in different ways and in variegated quantities…
In a consumerist, forgetful society, our own spirit of sacrifice might be the
soteriological solution and encourage us to assist our peers even when gratitude is
not a factor in the equation.

Usually, simple, commonsensical elements and segments of our lives are taken for
granted and individuals so not feel grateful for having them. This is what Andrei
Pleşu talked about in the above-mentioned work: the sublimation of
commonsensical things through gratitude, in an impoverished society. Also,
Mythropolite Anthony from Suroj preached about the importance of gratitude as the
acknowledgement of commonsensical, simple things such as health, that we take
for granted, without realizing how important these things become once they are
missed.

However, even when gratitude occurs in situations when one simple thing that
misses at one moment is regained, after a certain period, it is in human nature to
once again forget its importance.
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encountered a problem. Cf. Wood, A. M., Joseph, S., Lloyd, J. & Atkins, S. (2009), Gratitude influences sleep through
the mechanism of pre-sleep cognitions, Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 66, 43-48.
 “There are moments in life, when our heart becomes filled with gratitude and
should we be able to conserve this feeling day by day, event by event, this feeling
could develop in a deep and large happiness of the spirit. Still, somehow, we are not
able to defend our gratitude and our gladness in front of the daily misfortunes of
life, in front of pain and things of lesser importance than that of suffering: anger,
hardship and eventually, forgetfulness. In this way, our minds are constantly
animated by pain and suffering, while happiness fades away and quenches… We
must however fight this, because finally, life buds from happiness and gratitude.
This gratitude must however be cultivated in such a way as to itself produce buds of
hope. For this, our lives must be led under the sig of reason and attention. There
are so many things in life that we take for granted: it is but natural to be healthy, to
have a strong body, it is natural for life to flow with its daily gladness… However,
these are not just things to be taken for granted. What we do not realize is that
these are small marvels that happen every single moment. […] The sense of duty
and of responsibility might not determine us to find within ourselves the power of
sacrifice. However, gratitude will.”16

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16
Cf. http://laurentiudumitru.ro/blog/2008/09/09/despre-recunostinta-mitropolitul-antonie-de-suroj/, Despre
recunostinta, Mitropolitul Antonie de Suroj, Cuvânt rostit pe 12 septembrie 1972 în biserica Sfântul Nicolae din
Hamovnik, Moscova, traducere din limba rusă de Angela Voicilă.