Why I’m thankful for a heart of gratitude
Perhaps the title of this piece sounds a little bit like the Pharisee in Luke’s Gospel who prays to God essentially saying, ‘I’m not like those bad people who sin,’ but bear with me. I have a lot of flaws but I am thankful ingratitude is not one of them. I’ve always liked that line from Calvin Coolidge, who wrote, in his 1925 Thanksgiving Day Proclamation: “We should bow in gratitude to God for His many favors.”
As a historian of sorts, I’ve always been struck by how appreciation for Thanksgiving has been highest in times of national suffering and sacrifice. There’s definitely something there and I touched on that in a piece at Carolina Journal a few years back.
I hate sometimes that life is hard but that fact can instill gratitude.
Several times this week I heard people joke, “I can’t wait to eat so much” or “I’m ready to consume without limits.” I say silly things myself, so this isn’t a criticism of them, but it did give me another chance to reflect more seriously on what gratitude and thanksgiving truly mean.
Gratitude is the great leveler, keeping us humble and focused on the world and needs outside of ourselves. Cicero calls a thankful heart “the parent of all the other virtues.”
It’s interesting that once we jump into the hyper-political world, entitlement so often overshadows gratitude. It’s telling that some of the loudest political addicts on social media, and even many public figures, seem marked more by grievance than gratitude. Entitlement is a powerful tool for manipulating people and coalescing power. It may dominate our contemporary politics, but gratitude is what governs a healthy soul. And that truth carries a simple lesson for us individually and collectively as a nation.
A republic built on entitlement eventually fractures, but a nation shaped by gratitude retains the humility and resilience necessary for a self-governing society to flourish.
I’m thankful for a grateful heart because it keeps me grounded, and while I’m so far from being perfect or even good, it helps me to think of others. It reminds me of a beautiful line from George Eliot’s Middlemarch: “What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?”
Happy Thanksgiving!
—Ray Nothstine
— The Federalism Beat