Gratitude for What Is

Growing up on Disney fairytales and romantic comedies, a part of me has longed for the “happily ever after.” The time of life when everything is set, all your troubles are behind you, and you get to revel in the good. I haven’t surveyed every human, but I’m pretty sure this is a common response. However, like I wrote about last week, happiness is a behavior, not a time or place. And part of that behavior is being grateful for what is.

Some dear friends of mine moved here recently and I’m approaching their arrival differently. In years past, I would have craved constancy and spun out into a “happily ever after” where they would be here forever, but now I know better. As much as I want to be “best friends for life” with someone, to have people in my life forever, that’s not how the world works. People that I thought I’d socialize with in my 90s, I’ve had to let go of. People I was super close to once upon a time know nothing about my life these days. Instead of being bitter about it, I’m accepting it. This is reality.

Gratitude fits in because I’m grateful for what I’m currently experiencing, not what I think I’ll be experiencing. I’m beyond thrilled my friends are here and I’ll enjoy our time together while it lasts precisely because I know it won’t. They’ll move away or our lives will change. Something will happen, that’s inevitable, but also OK.

Psychology professor Robert Emmons says:

“[G]ratitude makes us appreciate the value of something, and when we appreciate the value of something, we extract more benefits from it; we’re less likely to take it for granted. . . . In effect, I think gratitude allows us to participate more in life. We notice the positives more, and that magnifies the pleasures you get from life. Instead of adapting to goodness, we celebrate goodness.”

I’m participating more in my current life and appreciating what I already have. The life that isn’t a fairytale, the one where I don’t have everything I could ever wish for. The life that keeps changing because we can’t press pause. In this life, I’m grateful for friends new and old. I’m grateful for the multiple communities I’m a part of. I’m grateful both my parents are still alive. I’m grateful for my nieces and nephews – the ones I’m related to by blood and the ones I’m not. I’m grateful for the cozy, safe, quiet apartment I live in. I’m grateful for flowers and sunshine and birds. I’m grateful I know what it means to feel joy and that I’m no longer trying to capture it because I recognize as much as I’d like to hold on to happy emotions, I cannot. I’m grateful I have so many things to be grateful for.

I dream of a world where we understand there is no happily ever after. A world where we remember happiness is a behavior, not a place or time. A world where we understand that we can magnify our life’s pleasures by feeling grateful for what is.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.