Before we eat Thanksgiving dinner at my house, along with saying grace, each of the 20 or so people at the table takes a turn lighting a candle and expressing gratitude. The appreciation can be lighthearted — for mashed potatoes or a day off from school. Or the thankfulness may be accompanied by a heavy heart — for the memories of a loved one recently passed.
As it happens, this expression is not an empty exercise. And if we developed the discipline to be consciously grateful on a regular basis, year-round, research shows we'd be happier and suffer less depression and stress. We'd sleep better and be better able to face our problems.
There's evidence that gratitude is uniquely important to well-being. Long embraced by religion as a "manifestation of virtue," it's one of the few things that "can measurably change people's lives," says Robert Emmons, a University of California-Davis professor who has been studying it since 1998 and is the author of the book "Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier.""Gratitude implies humility — a recognition that we could not be who we are or where we are in life without the contributions of others," Emmons writes.
At a time when Thanksgiving is the starting gun for a race to the mall, Jeffrey Froh has some insight as well.
"We know there's a negative relationship between materialism and gratitude. That's pretty powerful right there," says Froh, a professor at Hofstra University on New York's Long Island. His research with more than 1,000 high school students showed that grateful teenagers were also less likely to be depressed, more likely to want to give back to their communities and more likely to have higher grade-point averages, among other traits.
But despite the benefits, Emmons says, gratitude is in trouble. "Outside of happiness, gratitude's benefits are rarely discussed these days. Indeed, in contemporary American society, we've come to overlook, dismiss or even disparage the significance of gratitude as a virtue," he says.
"We have become entitled, resentful, ungrateful and forgetful."
Not all of us.
Gratitude, says Susan Swan, is an important component of yoga — something she's taught since 1991.
Almost three years ago, she had a stroke during a class. But when she tells the story, she focuses on her good fortune. Her students called 911, help came quickly and she was given an experimental drug that worked wonders. She has children, grandchildren and friends.
Swan knows she doesn't look like she's had a stroke.
At 68, she's tall and wrinkle free, with straight, shiny blond hair. Her speech is good, her aphasia not overwhelming.
She's gone back to teaching yoga, which she credits for her ability to feel gratitude rather than anger.
It's important, she says early one evening over tea in her tiny kitchen, to "come into the now. Lose your mind and find your senses. Right now, I am fine."
Swan, who also has survived breast and colon cancer, gives meaning to Emmons' statement that gratitude "is morally and intellectually demanding." He doesn't suggest forgetting the negative.
"If you have something that life serves up, you have a choice to say, 'Hey, there is a blessing in here,'" Swan said. "'How is it going to serve me and not impede me?'"
Judy Vaughan is a St. Joseph of Carondelet nun who "has real trouble with the institutional church" but a rock-solid belief in a God who is "a loving spirit who has my back," and a doctorate in social ethics from the University of Chicago.
"I learned from my mom the importance of saying thanks," Vaughan says."She was born in 1916 and came from the school that said when you got gifts, you wrote notes."
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