Anybody reading this has recently survived another Thanksgiving holiday. Too much food of course, to the point of gluttony and beyond, and the undercurrents of celebrating incipient genocide of Native Americans, not to mention innocent turkeys. And then there's the lurking threat of familial and/or friends drama and trauma that accompanies any such holiday gathering. But it was all OK on my end, and no blood was shed (other than the turkeys').
One thing I am reminded of at almost any gathering, and sometimes it seems most any human interaction of all, is that people sure like to complain. Even those of us lucky enough to be born into the most materially wealthy society in history seem to be able to find plenty of things to gripe about. And one way many attempt to cope with that is to seek insight and maybe solace in "self-help" books - one of the biggest-selling categories of "non-fiction" books. One of my own minor annoyances is how many such shallow books are published and find their way onto best-seller lists, taking the places of important and actually illuminating literary, environmental, political or other more worthy works. But it does no good to complain about *that*.
"Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier," by UC Davis psychologist Robert Emmons might be categorized as fitting into the self-help genre, as it is an exploration of the budding "positive psychology" movement. The book reports on Emmons' self-described "groundbreaking" research into how practicing thankulness can counteract not only bad situations, and also explores the increasingly prevalent theory that we all have a predetermined "set point" for just how happy we tend to be (as F. Scott Fitzgerald was reported to have lamented, he was born "two martinis down," while one of the most happy of my friends holds that he was born two martinis up).
"Neurohype" is endemic these days, with piles of books and articles purporting to explain most everything about the human brain and behavior. It is wise to be sceptical about much reductionism, no matter how authoritative proponents might seem. In a neuroscience course long ago, our professor said "Four-fifths of what I will teach you here will be considered nonsense before too long. And that will be true for what they are teaching at that point, too."
With those caveats in mind, "Thanks" is indeed a book that provides some useful insight and tools into mental well-being, and it's also a serious exploration of a current arena of psychological research, by one of the leaders in that emerging field.
Gratitude is defined most simply as "the condition of being thankful." Emmons observes that gratitude has rarely been studied by psychologists, who seem to have looked into virtually every other possible aspect of the human psyche, including some rare and bizarre ones. This is unfortunate, he notes, as "gratitude is literally one of the few things that can measurably change peoples' lives." But - and here's the self-help angle - "gratitude (or thankfulness) is an effortful state to create and maintain. It is not for the intellectually lethargic."
Reporting on his research, Emmons writes, "Preliminary findings suggest that those who regularly practice grateful thinking do reap emotional, physical, and interpersonal benefits... Grateful people experience higher levels of positive emotions such as joy, enthusiasm, love, happiness, and optimism... The practice of gratitude as a discipline protects a person from the destructive impulses of envy, resentment, greed, and bitterness." Buddhists and others have been saying this for millennia, of course. But the idea that cultivating gratitude can fight depression is no small deal, as antidepressants have become among the most-prescribed medications in the nation. Not only all that, but being grateful can, or might, also protect us from heart attacks, lessen physical pain and confer other physiological benefits.
That's a tall order for any intervention or creed. But Emmons spends the bulk of his book outlining psychological theory, research, historical examples and other support for this prescription. How have figures ranging from the biblical Job to Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel persevered through the worst travails? Emmons holds that they each discovered what Albert Schweitzer called the "secret of life: giving thanks for everything." That goes for all of us, under much less trying circumstances, holds Emmons, who cites numerous creeds such as Hebrew scripture, the Koran, the Buddha, Christianity, Greek and Roman philosophers, and so on in arguing that "Gratitude is a quality that we should aspire to as part and parcel of personal growth."
But first, Emmons warns, we have to overcome what may be an innate human "negativity bias," which means that "incoming emotions and thoughts are more likely to be unpleasant rather than pleasant... This means that for some of us being a grouch comes naturally." Furthermore, some professional "helpers" have played to such negative tendencies; Emmons wades a bit into controversy by seeming to endorse some "scathing" critiques of psychological theories and therapists who have often nurtured an ethos of victimization and narcissism rather than thankfulness. At the same time, he avers that we need to be less focused on individuality and more aware and, yes, thankful for our relationships and dependency on others for our well being.
Emmons, as a professor and editor of the leading academic positive psychology journal, can lapse into hair-splitting jargon at times, declaiming more than once that he is not doing so, but his writing is mostly clear and engaging. A conundrum raised by "Thanks!," which is not addressed by Emmons, is that by focusing on one's blessings, one is ignoring a world of suffering where, to pick one example, more than 25,000 children die of preventable causes every day. It's true that a person's guilt or happiness would not ameliorate such vast tragedy. But to feel sanguine, or to even gloat, over one's blessings just seems wrong sometimes. Just go look at what people post on Facebook.
Perhaps this is what Emmons is getting at when he writes, "The lesson here is that we need to choose our comparisons wisely. Epicurus wrote, 'Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.' Gratitude is the realization that we have everything we need, at the moment." Such language treads perilously close to self-help pabulum; it also expresses timeless truth. Emmons wisely notes that "Feeling as if we should feel gratitude after being sermonized might produce resentment, not gratitude."
Thankfully, this skillful book, which concludes with instructions on how to practice gratitude, did not provoke such resentment in this reader. So, perhaps, I should thank Emmons for writing it and the simple fact of my having lived another day to write this. There, maybe it works - I feel better already.
But then again, I'm not a turkey.
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