I recently took my father on a belated birthday/father’s day/an-experience-is-better-than-material-goods gift trip to New York, which was filled with all of the sightseeing, theatre-watching, people-watching, and good food that one can imagine from such an experience, plus some good father-daughter bonding time, which is always a bonus for me. Particularly as my parents (and I) get older, I find that I cherish these times together and the opportunity to make some memories that I know I will equally cherish down the road. And, at the same time, it was filled with those little frustrations that are common to too much family togetherness. It’s easy to forget to be grateful, when someone you know so well, and with whom you are spending twenty-four hours a day, is annoying you.
At the end of the trip, we arrived early to navigate through the airport check-in process. Despite the fact that he traveled internationally for many years, this process seems to mystify my now 74-year old father. I reminded him (again) that he needed his ID out to check his luggage as we approached the agent. Seeing his nearly used-up subway pass in his hand, I snipped, “That’s your subway pass, she needs your ID.” I was irritated that he clearly wasn’t listening to me. He ignored me and my attitude, took his time finding his license, checked his bag, and then said to the agent, “Would this help you? It only has twenty cents left on it.” Her face broke out into the broadest smile as she accepted the subway pass and thanked him, repeatedly, as though he had just handed her a winning lottery ticket. “You have no idea how much I can use this,” she said.
When was the last time that you knew you made an impact on someone like that? When was the last time that you sincerely expressed gratitude to someone else, for the impact that he or she has made to you? We often save up our gratitude for the truly monumental moments. We frame it in terms of what would make the biggest impact on ourselves, without thinking about what might impact another. Or, we shortchange our expressions of gratitude through rote missives at birthdays and holidays that might as well be form letters of thanks.
Research has demonstrated that expressions of gratitude have impacts on your well-being, your disposition, and your attitude. And recent studies have shown that these impacts are significantly long-lasting: by practicing gratitude, by flexing those gratitude muscles, you are in fact training your brain to operate from a place of gratitude. It’s sort of like those HIIT classes that rev up your metabolism to a point that allows your body to continue burning fat throughout the day, even when you’re being sedentary. Expressing gratitude revs up your brain to continue to feel gratitude even after the moment has passed.
The holidays are a time that remind us to be grateful – it’s what this whole “giving thanks” thing is about, after all – and at the same time can be some of the most stress-inducing, least grateful times of the year. Being in forced company with family does not always lead to expressions of gratitude, except perhaps for the moment when one finally is able to walk out the door and return home. Our Norman Rockwell, Hallmark versions of what holidays are “supposed” to be have ramped up expectations and lead to increased amounts of stress when our own don’t live up to those images. Fights break out. Disappointments are aired. Old grievances come into play. And, we can unintentionally and unfairly add to this stress when we make assumptions that for everyone, going home for the holidays is a happy or even a foregone conclusion.
So as we navigate through this season of consumerism, over-eating, and forced interactions, we each would do well to spend some time working out those gratitude muscles. Find one small thing for which you can be grateful. And then find one small way by which you might give to another, to provide an opportunity for another to have his or her own moment of gratitude. It doesn’t take much. Sometimes as little as twenty cents. But the impacts literally can be life-changing.