‘A ray of light’: How I found gratitude in trying times

I should be grateful. 

The thought floats through my mind as I stare outside on the cloudy fall day. Next to me, steam curls in elegant wisps from my coffee cup. The baby monitor shows a peaceful toddler, gently stirring from his slumber. 

There’s no immediate reason to feel anything but gratitude. All of my basic needs are met, and there is so much good in my life. Yet, sitting in the calm before the day begins, I try to summon the fuzzy feelings of thankfulness. 

I feel a bit empty. Confused, even. Why, as I look around and count my blessings, can I not muster the energy to feel grateful? 

“We’re making the argument that we kind of do gratitude wrong,” Jenae Nelson says when I give her a call. Many people look for answers to why they don’t feel more grateful, she added. We’re often told to create a gratitude list or keep a journal that documents our thanks, says Dr. Nelson, a psychologist who researches gratitude. Research has shown those things are helpful, but they only get you so far. 

“Traditional gratitude lists are really good for helping us acknowledge our blessings,” says Dr. Nelson. This is a good first step, she continues, “but the problem is, if you get stuck there, then they stop working after a while.” 

That’s where I am. Despite listing the blessings in my life, I can’t shake the bleak reality: I don’t feel grateful. That realization brings with it a different set of emotions: guilt, mostly. In these moments, trying to be grateful actually feels, well, terrible.

“Sometimes it can backfire, the idea of being grateful,” A. Helwa tells me when I speak with her. “Because it can introduce shame.” 

Ms. Helwa, author of “Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey Into the Heart of Islam,” shared that in her faith, gratitude is less about material belongings and more about an internal practice. Gratitude, or shukr, transcends one’s circumstances. It’s not necessarily an emotion or reaction to something gained, but more a state of being, “of mind and heart.” 

Of course, true gratitude must be authentic. However, it can be difficult to express genuine gratitude when our feelings are hidden behind forced smiles and empty words of thanks.

“We do live in a culture of suffocating optimism,” Chaim Steinmetz, the senior rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York, told me. He’s written about gratitude and how it’s practiced in the Jewish faith. “[People] don’t understand that it’s more important ... to live a life of meaning and authenticity than a life of happiness.”

I wanted to challenge my own pursuit of “suffocating optimism,” as Rabbi Steinmetz put it. On a particularly hard day, I was struggling to stay positive. My husband came into the room, and I decided to drop the facade and be honest: I was struggling.

As we embraced, he admitted that he was struggling, too. He shared that when he had recently driven through our old neighborhood, he’d been hit by waves of nostalgia, longing, feeling acutely that the place we had left had been our true home. Our new community? We were still finding our footing.

Soon, we were both crying, reflecting on all the things we had loved: going for long hikes in the woods, the plethora of playgrounds, watching our son learn to walk in the local library. All of these things had been filled with such joy, so many memories. 

As our tears began to dry, I sniffled. “But you know what?” I asked. “When we lived there, we didn’t appreciate any of those things.” My husband agreed. We didn’t realize what a blessing it was until it was gone.

Something that Ms. Helwa said resurfaced in my mind: the Islamic concept of kashf, or unveiling. Gratitude is simply unveiling the beauty that is inherent to everything. How do we peel back the layers of our own perceptions – riddled with trauma, insecurities, criticism – to see the good that is there? 

For Ms. Helwa, the moments when we struggle the most are the most powerful times to turn to God or those around us. Rather than hiding, sometimes the best thing we can do is offer empty hands and an ungrateful heart.

“I’m bringing that lack of gratitude to You because I know that You are capable of unveiling something,” she says, referring to her own relationship with God. “I’m not grateful. But I come to You with the hope of being grateful.”

Gratitude can help our psychological well-being but it is also an ethical imperative, Rabbi Steinmetz explains. When we use gratitude to make ourselves feel better, it’s a bit “flimsier” or self-serving. When we practice it as a moral obligation, we shift our attention to others. This can be transformative.

“It’s a completely different way of seeing the world,” Rabbi Steinmetz says. In Hebrew, the word hoda’ah is used both “to offer thanks” and to concede to another. It is a word for both appreciation and surrender. 

“When you truly offer gratitude to another person, you are essentially saying, ‘I can’t do it myself,’” he says. 

Dr. Nelson recently published a paper in The Journal of Positive Psychology that looks at the connection between gratitude and indebtedness. Negative indebtedness is the feeling of obligation to return the favor, to pay a debt. That type of indebtedness can be harmful to relationships. When we feel forced to do good, it takes away our agency and becomes “stifling,” she says.

Positive indebtedness, on the other hand, is an internal motivation to pay it forward or do good in the world. Many experience this deep sense of indebtedness in their spiritual practices, or when they consider how much their parents loved and cared for them. Researchers found that gratitude and positive indebtedness are highly connected, and that feeling indebted to another can deepen your relationship. 

“Positive indebtedness: that is what builds relationships and binds you together with that person,” Dr. Nelson says. 

As my husband and I stood in the kitchen, holding each other and crying, I felt it: that warm, fuzzy glow of gratitude. Gratitude for my husband, expressing his complicated feelings. Gratitude that we were able to be vulnerable with one another. Gratitude that I could lean on him when I was struggling, and he on me. 

I was doing gratitude wrong. Yes, it’s possible to find gratitude in my morning cup of coffee, but it is so much more powerful to find it in my connection to others. To see and be seen authentically is when I’m reminded how much I need the people in my life. And they need me, too. There’s an immenseness to this, a deep sense of awe. And when I don’t feel particularly grateful, I can ground myself in that truth. 

“When things are difficult, finding the ability to look for that one good thing is actually heroic,” Rabbi Steinmetz says. “Gratitude is the resolution that life is worth living ... a ray of light that reminds [us] why life is important.”