What does gratitude mean?
We humans are part of a large system of receiving and passing on. I didn't get my life from myself, but because my parents loved each other. So I owe my life to someone else.
Basically, I can't live on my own, but am always dependent on someone else giving me something: nature gives me food, my employer gives me money, another person gives me their love.
Saying thank you is like signing a contract: Yes, I confirm that! Saying thank you is an act of consciousness. I realize: Ah, I am receiving something and I am becoming richer as a result. I am coming a little closer to abundance.
But that also sounds as if we are dependent on other people?
Exactly, that's basically what we are. And thanks is something like an agreement to that: It's okay for me.
When I am grateful, it also helps me not to see life as a lack: Do I always see the glass half empty or the glass half full?
If I'm always thinking about loss, then I feel bad. The coronavirus pandemic was and still is a huge challenge for us humans. I feel stress and my body releases hormones such as adrenaline or cortisol, which make me tired and exhausted. But if I remind myself in a continuous form that I am in abundance, then I strengthen myself in a positive sense. This means that my body produces endorphins and dopamine. I feel good, I feel well and I am richly blessed.
So the feeling of gratitude we have towards others strengthens us? Is that the reason why gratitude diaries etc. are booming at the moment?
Yes, but I take a critical view: if I just write down a list of as many things as possible every day that I'm grateful for, that's garbage. I also need to feel this gratitude: Only when I am truly filled with gratitude and something makes me happy do I enter a truly positive flow state.
How do I achieve this state? Can I train it?
For me, it has something to do with how I connect with the idea of gratitude: mentally, emotionally and physically. How do I perceive all the wealth that surrounds me and that I possess? What do I feel when I think about it? For me, this means connecting and this can be practiced. A metaphor: if I have a bad line due to a lack of internet, then nothing reaches me and nothing reaches the other person. But I can do exercises to activate my network. Then it becomes fuller, noticeable and very satisfying. So I can strengthen this network.
What exercises could that be? Just writing them down doesn't help, you say...
Writing is the reinforcement of thinking. But if you only write without feeling anything, it doesn't work. So you have to make a thought tangible. Only when it slips into your heart, so to speak, and can be felt in your body, does your gratitude have an effect and your body releases hormones.
Haven't we long since forgotten this kind of sentient thinking in our information and performance-oriented society?
Yes, we have developed a tendency to take everything for granted: Of course I get my salary, of course I buy my vegetables and my bread, of course I have enough money in my bank account to buy what I need. I no longer have any awareness at all that this is anything but a given, but that it is a great gift that I have at my disposal every day. When you receive something as a gift, you have a feeling that grows inside you. A feeling of love, for example. When you write down something you're grateful for, it's about getting a little emotionally involved. There is an old Jewish prayer that I sometimes practice, for example. It's called .... . It translates as what is enough, what makes me happy. The prayer dates back to the time when Israel was freed from Egyptian captivity (when was that?). The memory that I was once a slave and am now free brings about a feeling of: Wow, how glad I am to be free!
How does prayer work and how can it be applied to the present day?
The prayer goes something like this: just that you saw our need would have been enough.
But you didn't just see our need. You also gave us bread. The mere fact that you gave us bread would have been enough. Not only did you give us bread, but you also led us through the desert. Just the fact that you led us through the desert would have been enough. But you not only led us through the desert, you strengthened us throughout the years. And so on...
And if you translate that into today's world, it could read like this: Just the fact that I had a bed tonight would have been enough. Not only did I have a bed, which is great, but I also had a warm shower. Just having that warm shower early in the morning would have been enough. But not only did I have a shower, I also had an incredibly tasty bread roll. This incredibly tasty bread roll alone would have been enough. Not only did I have a delicious roll and an incredibly fantastic coffee.
When you tell yourself this, you go into feeling and sensing. These many little things that you enjoy every day as a matter of course, without awareness, without thinking about them, suddenly take on a much greater weight and make the half-full glass really precious.
I ask myself whether I can concentrate on the small pleasures of everyday life while the world outside is facing more and more crises: corona, Afghanistan, climate change? Isn't that a complete retreat into the private sphere? And can I still afford to go through the world like this?
It is about enduring precisely these ambivalences. Life is not either black or white. What is right? Abundance or scarcity? Allowing both to exist at the same time and giving yourself permission to be grateful and have compassion at the same time is not a contradiction: one part of me is sad about what is not there, another part sees the abundance and is grateful for it. That's how this world is. It's like a form of acceptance.
What are you grateful for yourself?
Oh, I am grateful for so many things: For example, I spent 45 years of my life with intense forms of asthma and atopic dermatitis. Life was torture for me. I am so glad and grateful that this is a chapter of the past, that my skin is now able to breathe and reactivate on its own. I am grateful that I have my wife by my side, which I don't take for granted. And I am grateful that when I left the church, I found a place at pme Familienservice where I could dock professionally and that I can contribute my skills here.