How To Be Grateful (And Why it Matters)

For many, Thanksgiving isn’t uncomplicated, whether because of thorny family relations or their feelings about the holiday’s origins. Even so, an entire nation pausing to catalog its blessings is a good thing; when friends or family make a ritual of going around the table to give specific thanks aloud, it’s even better.

But to be thankful often stops short of being grateful. And more gratefulness is what we need right now.

You might argue that “I’m thankful” and “I’m grateful” are interchangeable terms, as both reflect an attitude about your current state. But they really aren’t the same. Being thankful is a reflection of how you are feeling: you’re happy about a particular circumstance, however it originated. You can say “thank my lucky stars” or “thank goodness” and both would reflect the same sentiment, in which the good outcome is the main point, while the cause of your happiness remains vague. You might thank those rhetorical stars, but you’re not grateful to them.

Being grateful is a kind of thankfulness that comes with a more specific lens: it expresses a relationship between you and whoever else contributed to your current experience. You’re grateful to others and aware of the role they play in your fortune. This is an emotional response to the understanding that other people are not required to do anything in your favor, yet have acted toward your happiness even so.

That reflects a larger picture that is sometimes lost in giving thanks. Too many successful people stick doggedly to the notion of being “self-made” as an absolute, insisting upon a firm correlation between degree of effort and degree of success. But life doesn’t actually work that way. The universe promises us nothing of the sort; it tenders no guarantee that either hard work or personal virtue will be rewarded in kind.

Grateful people are grateful precisely because they know that, at the end of the day, good outcomes are not a given, no matter how much you fight to achieve them. Work all you want, dig deep and hard, and you still cannot accomplish anything without your fellow humans. Admitting this doesn’t diminish the validity of your journey. You can recognize your own real effort even as you understand all the ways other people have made space for you to succeed.

That awareness often yields positive outcomes that ripple outward. If you believe your successes to truly be your own, you are less inclined to feel like others should receive the benefits of your help. In contrast, if you appreciate the ways people have contributed to your happiness, you are more inclined to engage in what scientists call “upstream reciprocity,” offering whatever gifts you have (emotional, financial, or spiritual) to those who might benefit. Paying it forward in this way reveals the active nature of gratefulness.

There are good reasons we say we “give thanks” but “show gratitude.” The latter is more intimate, revealing the heart of the speaker, and requiring a recipient, someone to witness this sentiment. The very nature of gratitude keeps alive the connections between people. However you express this — in words, meals, tasks, or touch — it deepens the bonds between you and the receiver (who was, after all, a giver to begin with).

In this moment of deep divisions, we need all the bonds we can craft. Yes, we should be thankful, but we need to keep going and be grateful, taking time to honor the ways our lives are knit together and acknowledging just how much those ties sustain us.