Five Ways Gratitude Has Made Me a Better Person

I believe I speak for most of us when I say that we all have had to endure the Covid-19 Pandemic and the resulting shutdown of the global economy. It has hurt the most vulnerable among us – our poor, our elderly, our disenfranchised. It affects everyone’s health and livelihoods. And although it seems like, here in the United States, things are starting to improve, the “new normal” is still very disorienting.

Because of this, we cannot afford to take the good things in our lives for granted. Not now. We have to appreciate all the good things in our lives, no matter how small or insignificant they might be. That you have a roof over your head at all, or that you have kind parents, or that Covid-19 isn’t a zombie plague – these things, however insignificant they may seem, are infinitely important in the midst of a crisis like this. It’s important that we be grateful towards those that provide for us.

Gratitude is the feeling of appreciation in response to the kindness of others. It is the proper response to becoming indebted to another on account of their generosity. Religions all over the world, from Christianity, to Judaism, to Islam, to Buddhism, all claim that gratitude lies at the heart of a healthy spiritual life. As a Christian and a virtue ethicist, I regard gratitude as more than a feeling; it’s a virtue that has a knock-on effect on all of the things in your life.

When it comes down to it, I feel that gratitude has probably been one of the most impactful virtues in my life. Though I haven’t achieved anything like the kind of self-actualization I still seek, but I feel like, in my life’s journey, realizing the importance of gratitude has been a major step towards what I desire more than anything else.

Here, I’d like to share just five ways that gratitude has made me a better person – and how it might make you a better person too!

1. Being grateful makes you more mature.

Gratitude is something that everybody should have more of as one matures. Whenever I think of a spoiled brat, the Platonic form of immaturity, I see a screaming child that always wants more now and is never satisfied by what he has. “Mommy, I want that!” is the battle cry of the spoiled brat before he assaults your ears with screaming. In other words, the archetypical spoiled brat is defined by being ungrateful.

To be grateful is to grow up and learn to appreciate what you have and the people around you. You no longer act like a tyrant that can demand others serve you. A grateful spoiled brat is like a square circle or a married bachelor: an impossibility.

Like most people, I acted like a spoiled brat towards others. Even late into my teens, I expected others to simply accommodate to my whims without any repercussion. This attitude got me into a lot of trouble when I was in college, when I almost flunked out because of a lack of effort. It took a great deal of soul-searching and a lot of help from the ones who loved me to really set me straight. Today, I’d like to think that I’m a lot more adult-like.

2. Being grateful makes you more positive-minded.

In order to be grateful, you have to clearly see the good in your life. When you concentrate on being grateful, you learn to appreciate this good and, in doing so, become a happier, healthier person. Too often, we accentuate on the negative, dwell on the things that go wrong. This is actually a natural tendency, developed from years of being hunted by wild predators in prehistoric times.

While I am a generally positive person, I’ve seen the impact of negativity on others. I’m reminded of the time a friend of mine told me about his family member. His family member was a college student with a presumably kind family and an overall comfortable, middle-class existence, yet he was oh-so miserable. He only saw the evil in the world, and he became miserable as a result. By contrast, my friend, through appreciating all of the good in his life, was much calmer and more relaxed, and he advised others to do the same. In accentuating the negative, the negativity consumes you.

At this time, when social distancing has isolated us, when the quarantine is taking away our livelihood, it’s tempting to become a cynic. Cynicism is easy to cultivate. It flattens the upswings of joy while easing the fall into despair, making life a comfortable, grey blah. But without joy, how could your life be worth living? How can you truly know if you have a good life or not if you aren’t willing to count your blessings? This was a major reason why I ended up distancing myself from social media websites like Twitter and Facebook.

3. Being grateful makes you more patriotic.

Part of being grateful of things in general means being thankful for the country and its leaders for the good things that they do. We live in a very divided country, yes, but we should learn to recognize the good things about our home. The buildings surrounding you, the neighbors you depend on (perhaps unwittingly), the flora and the fauna – these are what makes your country what it is. Your country is where your home is. Growing in gratitude has taught me to appreciate this aspect of life.

For much of my life, I’ve grown up doing good things for the disadvantaged in my communities: helping kids in the inner city get backpacks, giving elderly people Thanksgiving dinners, stuffing teddy bears for kids in hospital, etc. This continued after I graduated high school and moved to College Station. As part of the Big Event, a yearly program that gives back to the people of Bryan-College Station, I helped a kindly, elderly lady fix up her yard. This was my way of being patriotic – for showing my love for the place I call home.

Patriotism, at the end of the day, is appreciating and loving your home and giving back to the community you live in. You wouldn’t be you without your home, so it’s good to return the favor.

4. Being grateful orients you towards your family.

I love my parents a lot. My mother was such a generous and intelligent woman, caring yet stern when she needs to be. While she and I argue a whole lot, it’s due to our shared stubbornness more than anything. My father, likewise, was an amazing parent. He was probably the best role model I could’ve had, and I don’t think I’d be even half the man I was if it weren’t for him. Also, I’d like to think that my sense of whimsy came from his charmingly oddball behaviors. Together, the two of them make a great team.

That said, it isn’t just because my parents are good people that I appreciate them. They are also hard-working. I can never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever repay all the effort my parents have put into raising me even if it took me a hundred years. And from this, I feel I have a loving obligation to help them out what little ways I can. When I was younger, I’d disobey my parents a lot, as young people are wont to do. I listen to them more often now, in part because I know better than to repay their hard work with ingratitude. Honoring your mother and father becomes a lot easier when you stop and think about all the good things they did for you while raising you.

5. Being grateful makes you a more faithful religious person.

When you think about it, God made everything that exists, including all of the good things in our lives. This realization helped me to understand that I needed to give back to God as appreciation for all he’s done for me. In one of his famous Neapolitan sermons, St. Thomas Aquinas once said:

Since God is the Creator of all things, it is certain that all that we are and all that we have come from God. Thus the Apostle says, “What hast thou that thou hast not received?” And the Psalm says, “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and all they that dwell therein.” For this reason we owe him thanksgiving: “What shall I render unto the Lord for all the thigs that He has rendered to me?”

The Aquinas Catechism, p. 19-20

For a long time, I understand intellectually that God did good things. But I never really eternalized the meaning of God being the Creator. God has given us everything that good in our lives – our family, our homes, everything. Some might say that, by this logic, God also is responsible for bad things too, but He only allows evil to occur in order to bring about a greater good. It’s through my feelings of gratitude towards the Creator that I continue to grow in faith.

Thank God for all the wonderful things we take for granted. And may God bless my wonderful readers.