Man Vs ChatGPT: Gratitude 2

What does gratitude look like for you? I was always taught to be grateful for what I wasn’t. I wasn’t a starving child in Africa. I wasn’t walking around with shoes with holes in the soles. I wasn’t without any limbs.

While I was grateful for not starving as a kid it did not equate to wanting to eat liver or beets. It also jaded my thinking. Africa is full of people who do eat well including Black millionaires and billionaires. Although my shoes didn’t have holes it was no fun being teased for wearing brands that made it difficult to ascend in my preadolescent social circle. I do have all my limbs but I know people that have done wondrous things in this world who don’t.

Perspective is everything. Knowing what I know now I’m clear I didn’t understand gratitude.The complexities, the emotions, the amazing sensation had escaped me in my childhood. Ultimately, I got hard lessons but didn’t realize the sweet ones.

There’s a gentleness to gratitude. It arrives authentically and unforced. It does not need an audience to matter immensely. Yet it may exist splashed on a billboard for the world to see, as well as overwhelm you sitting in a quiet personal space. Most significantly, it’s found in what you receive from people but not necessarily what you are given by them.

It’s clear to me that throughout my life there are people who were teaching me and didn’t know it. Seeing someone struggle with sobriety taught me humility and the tragedy of addiction. Watching people take big risks in business and win taught me the magic of perseverance. Conversing with wealthy celebrities who are not self-centered gave me the frame of mind that kindness doesn’t have a price tag.

Eventually it became clear to me that gratitude is what I possess in any moment of my choosing. Faced with what feels like overwhelming obstacles that push you to pivot out of your comfort zone there is a space for it. Feeling so low that you start to express yourselves to people you have known forever with a new level of vulnerability, it is there. Allowing someone to get who you are so deeply that your verbal thank you for a greeting card flows with ten minutes of tears is a sure sign that you have allowed yourself to truly be grateful.