The Art of Gratitude

232 Pages·2018·12.71 MB·English

by  Jeremy David Engels

The Art of Gratitude
The Art of Gratitude
Jeremy David Engels
Cover image courtesy of Anna Sunderland Engels.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2018 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Engels, Jeremy David, 1979– author.
Title: The art of gratitude / Jeremy David Engels.
Description: Albany, NY : State University of New York, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and
index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017023407 (print) | LCCN 2018011350 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438469348 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781438469331 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Gratitude.
Classification: LCC BJ1533.G8 (ebook) | LCC BJ1533.G8 E54 2018 (print) | DDC 179/.9—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017023407
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To my mentors, who inspired me to lead the examined life:
Andrew & Kay Davis, and Greg Shepherd.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Gratitude’s Keywords
Chapter 1
Words Matter: On the Rhetoric of Emotion
Chapter 2
From “Charis” to “Gratia”: On the Political Origins of the Debt of Gratitude
Chapter 3
“Gratitudo”: On Christian Gratitude and Existential Debt
Chapter 4
“Indebted”: On the Contemporary Gratitude Literature
Chapter 5
“Santosha”: On the Yoga of Gratitude
Conclusion
The Politics of a Sunset: From Gratefulness to the Common Good
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
In his strange, weird, perplexing essay “Gifts,” published in 1844, Ralph Waldo
Emerson describes the paradox at the heart of gratitude—the paradox that I
pursue and ponder in this book—with his typical wit. He observes that though
Americans are taught to be grateful, when it comes down to it people hate
receiving gifts. “It is not the office of a man to receive gifts. How dare you give
them? We wish to be self-sustained. We do not quite forgive a giver.” The one
who bears gifts is not, for Emerson, a benefactor; he is a malefactor, a bearer of
evil, because “the expectation of gratitude is mean.” Emerson here reiterates the
commonplace argument (which goes back to ancient Greece) that there is no
such thing as a free gift. A gift given demands a return gift, which makes
gratitude a synonym for indebtedness. I bet that all of us have, at one time or
another, received a gift that was really a burden in disguise, a debt wrapped up in
pretty paper with a nice little bow. Does this mean, however, that we should
reject all gifts and gratitude, too? Certainly not. We wish to be self-reliant, self-
sustained; we wish to go it alone, but in the end we cannot. All of us live,
Emerson concludes, in a “condition of universal dependence.” We are
empowered by our social world, by the earth on which we stand, by nature, by
the common good, by those around us. We must be grateful for such support.
The paradox, then, is that a virtuous human life demands gratitude. And yet we
secretly recoil from gratitude, because we fear that to acknowledge a gift is to
assume a debt.
That is the paradox. The challenge is to change how we experience
gratitude, moving away from the debt of gratitude to gratitude as thankfulness,
or what I call in this book gratefulness. It is possible to give thanks without
affirming debt, and it is possible to build a society, and a democracy, that is
based on shared gratefulness rather than rituals of indebtedness. The Art of
Gratitude, as I describe in this book, challenges each of us to recognize the many
forms of support—mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, social, political,
material, ecological, economic—that make it possible for us to live. We do not
live in isolation. We did not build this alone. We stand on the shoulders of giants
—and on the earth, which we share in common.
I think my academic field is similar to many others in that we celebrate the
lonely, tortured genius, who, working through the night, fueled by caffeine,
comes up with a new and revolutionary idea all by him-or herself. This ideal has
long haunted the humanities. Though we write with keyboards rather than
fountain pens, and by electric rather than candle light, like our Renaissance and
Enlightenment forebearers contemporary scholars celebrate the heroic creator-
inventor-genius. I am proud of this book. I am under no illusions, however, that I
did it by myself. I did not write this book alone. Though the words (and the
errors and missteps!) are mine, this book is made possible by the fantastic
research and institutional support I received while writing it. The book would
not exist in the absence of the many friends and colleagues who read and
commented on parts of the manuscript. And without my friends and family, I
would have no words to write. To everyone, and everything, that made this book
possible, I extend my deepest, most profound thanksgiving. Though one of my
colleagues told me that writing about gratitude was like chasing windmills, The
Art of Gratitude is the first thing I have written that genuinely represents the type
of work I would like to do. To paraphrase Emerson, if you cut these pages they
would bleed, especially given everything that happened while I was finishing
this book. It can be a struggle to find your voice in academia, given the demand
to publish or perish and the need to write in a highly specialized argot for an
audience of professional critics trained in the art of destruction, not creation. As
I wrote this book, I began to find my voice, in large measure because I talked
with, and listened to, others.
Thanks to my dearest love Anna, who is my everything, for everything.
When I meditate on courage, I always call your face to mind, for you are a
walking, talking example of true courage, the type of courage required to do
what is right even when it is difficult and unexpected. I am blessed to spend my
days by your side. Thanks to my family, and to Anna’s family, for their
kindness, generosity, warmth, and smiles. It was Anna who first introduced me
to the physical practice of yoga over a decade ago—and wow, who knows where
I would be today without it! I shudder to think—and this ultimately proved a
philosophical homecoming of sorts for me. I wrote an essay on nonviolence in
high school that drew on yoga philosophy and that won a medal at National
History Day under the guidance and direction of Andrew Davis, my all-time
favorite teacher and my greatest inspiration. Every time that I enter the
classroom, I think to myself, if I can only be half as good a teacher as Andrew, I
will have done my job today! To Andrew and Kay Davis of Wichita, Kansas,