Becoming the Most Grateful Person Alive
Written by Tim Soerens, Parish Collective Executive Director
I have a personal ambition that feels a little vulnerable and even awkward to share, but I think it’s worth it because I need some healthy competition.
I want to be the most grateful person alive.
Can one become the most grateful person alive? Isn’t that a little weird? Is it possible to “win” an infinite game like gratitude?
Respectfully, the answer I’ve come to after years of studying scripture, theology, philosophy, psychology, sociology and a delightful conversation between Brené Brown and Oprah Winfrey, is an emphatic yes.
In the conversation, Brené Brown says the following, which has always stayed with me:
“I made a commitment to never talk about joy for the rest of my career without talking about gratitude.
Because for 12 years of research, I have never interviewed a single person who talks about the capacity
to really experience and soften into joy who does not actively practice gratitude.”
In other words, one clear path to joy is to commit to the practice of gratitude.
I don’t always feel joyful. But I can always express gratitude, especially when I feel awful. That’s one of the magical realities of gratitude; it’s a practice before it’s a feeling. You can name it, express it, and commit to it even when it feels like the world is on fire, you are suffering from depression, and getting through the end of the day feels insurmountable.
I’ve never been able to will myself into joy. But I have been able to zoom down and muster an honest bit of gratitude even if it’s for the next breath, for the roof above my head, or for the colleague on the other end of a Zoom call.
So what does this have to do with neighborhoods, being the Church in our everyday lives, and joining God in renewing every square inch of creation? In many ways, it’s the foundation for all of it. As the agrarian saint Wendell Berry says, “It all turns on affection,” and before affection comes attention that calls forth gratitude.
So here is a threefold challenge:
Pay close attention.
Get more particular.
Say something about it.
Step 1: Pay attention to what is right around you.
(This is more subversive than ever with these supercomputers in our pockets.) Take a walk. Look up into the sky for longer than 10 seconds. Go to your favorite place in the neighborhood and see how big your list can be for this place. You get the idea.
Step 2: Get even more particular.
Drill down into more and more details. For example, as I’m writing, I see a cup of tea. I’m grateful for this tea, but let’s get more particular. I’m especially grateful for how the steam dances in the morning light. I’m grateful for the seasonal Trader Joe’s Winter Wake-Up Tea with the red tea flag (what do you call those things?) in my University of Notre Dame mug, which I got on November 8th, 2022, while speaking at the Fitzgerald School of Real Estate’s conference on Church properties.
See the difference? Now I’m already thinking about how special that event was, how many remarkable people I met, and how grateful I am for the Catholic Church, the movie Rudy, and changing leaves on a college campus. If you want to be more grateful, get more particular. Particularity invites the universal
Step 3: Share the particularity.
As we gather around tables, I’d encourage each of us to share as much gratitude with as much particularity as possible this holiday season. Don’t just tell your mom you love her; tell her why in a way that she hasn’t ever heard before, about something completely unique to her. When we share what we are grateful for, the world begins to change, even if only in us.
I’m grateful for each of the 8,372 of you who could be reading this.
—Tim
