A shared universe › Blog › Being grateful without quite knowing to whom · Español
When you feel grateful and do not know whom to thank, you can still express it: write it down, tell someone about it or pass it on as a kind act towards another person. There are joys we do not know whom to thank for: a test result that came back fine, a child born healthy, finally breathing again after a hard year. Gratitude appears, but it has no clear addressee.
The psychologist Robert Emmons, one of those who have studied it most, describes it as realising that something good has come into our lives and that, in part, it comes from outside ourselves. Sometimes that “outside” is a person. Other times it is life, luck, chance or whatever each of us believes in.
Emmons, a professor at the University of California, Davis, explains it in an article for the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley. He distinguishes two parts: recognising that there is goodness in life, without denying that there are problems too, and seeing that the source of that goodness lies outside ourselves: in other people or, for those with a spiritual outlook, in something greater.
Emmons also calls it a social emotion, one that strengthens bonds. Even when we do not know whom to thank, gratitude reminds us of something simple: that we have not got this far on our own, that something or someone has held us up.
In the early studies of gratitude, when people were asked to write down what they were grateful for, not everything had an addressee. In the 2003 study by Emmons and Michael McCullough, the things participants wrote included phrases such as “waking up this morning”, “the generosity of friends” or “to God for giving me determination”.
Some point to someone in particular; others, to life as a whole. Both are gratitude, and both can be expressed.
Feeling grateful is already good. Putting it into words helps it not to slip by and helps you remember it later. That is why gratitude exercises ask us to write, tell or say out loud what we are grateful for.
If you would like to do it regularly, in how to keep a gratitude journal you will find what is known about how often and how to write it, so that it does not turn into a routine.
There is a way of giving thanks that does not need to know to whom: doing good to someone else. In the same 2003 study, those who wrote down each day what they were grateful for more often reported having helped someone with a problem or offered them support. In that study, gratitude seemed to turn people towards others.
If you would like to give it that shape, acts of kindness has simple ideas to get started.
Sometimes gratitude comes alongside other emotions. Someone coming out of an illness may feel relief and, at the same time, fear that it will return; someone grateful to have made it this far may still miss someone. There is no need to choose. As Emmons says, gratitude does not mean denying what is hard.
It can also happen with someone who is gone: being grateful for what that person gave you while missing them still being here. That gratitude, mixed with sorrow, is a way of staying connected to them, and it has its place in “For someone who is gone”.
And there are moments when gratitude has no particular cause: it appears in front of the sea, a starry night or a sunset. That emotion is the subject of awe.
In A shared universe you can choose “What I’m grateful for” and tell it, without saying who you are. Your gratitude does not need an addressee: it will shine in the universe and others will be happy with you.