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.