Why Practicing Gratitude Isn’t Working for You

Your eardrums are bleeding.

The same message is blasted from the loudspeaker. You’ve heard it many times; did you perhaps not listen hard enough? Or maybe you just haven’t been ‘taking action.’

You move closer to the speaker. And, yes, the message is now certainly louder. The result? Your eardrums only bleed more profusely. You remain frustrated as ever.

It is one of society’s most prized buzzwords. Gratitude. The supposed secret to life. I even heard a recent study tout it as “the most productive emotion,” whatever that means.

Gratitude is a myth. It is a myth because it is a forced a notion. It is putting square pegs in round holes.

You have been told desire is the root of all suffering. That the one who desires nothing has everything. There is, thus, a logical appeal to gratitude: If you are always grateful for what you have, you avoid suffering by not desiring for things to be different.

But this tactic doesn’t work.

Sit quietly, and ask yourself: What does it really mean to be grateful?

It means to accept things for the way they are. To look at whatever one has, or whatever happens to them, and say: “Yes. These things bring me peace. All that is going on in is fine.”

But the moment you attempt to react to the events of your life like this, you must know: You have already lost.

Can a man with a size 10 foot put on a size 6 shoe? If he is really desperate, he may shove and shove. When the shoving doesn’t work, he may pick up a shoehorn. He may push, squeeze, and struggle. Perhaps even the tips of his toes have edged inside. But the shoe will never come on.

The practice of gratitude is a cheap, plastic shoehorn that attempts to ‘hack’ its way to acquiring what the heart of every man desires. Total peace and bliss.

The perfect existsence cannot be shoehorned through some synthetic practice. To live life trying to simulate gratitude is to forever spend your life putting out fires.

Tell me, frankly, where has gratitude gotten you?

Gratitude is a loser’s game.

At least Cisiphus could see the boulder reach the top of the mountain before it rolled back down. The one who practices gratitude is denied even this. Peace sits atop Everest; the one who practices gratitude won’t even ascend to the top of the stairs of his home.

You will never find peace in your life through clever psychological tactics.

Peace only comes through questioning and understanding. To the one who questions every feeling and reflex he has. Why he has it. What caused it.

Such a man moves towards Understanding. Understanding what his life actually is. For him, gratitude is as useful as a snow jacket on a summer’s day.

Tell me: Did you open the doors of your suffering with any real effort? Every plan that failed, every heartbreak, all the unfulfilled expectations: Did the pain of these events come through some deliberate effort?

No. The pain just arose naturally. In the same vein, peace will only come naturally, once a man truly sees his life for what it is.

Peace comes to the rarest of men. Almost no one is serious about attaining it.

Most people just “want to be happy and grateful.” It is a shame: If they gave the contract they are singing a second glance, they would see misery’s signature at the bottom.