When I feel snarky and resentful, and someone intentionally mentions my need for gratitude, I roll my eyes with a bit of annoyance. Intellectually, I know gratitude is an essential, imperative stepping stone, a guaranteed safety rope that can pull me out of any emotional funk and general human distress. But there is something about when someone else tells me to be grateful that feels empty and a tad bit weaponized. 

Lately, I have been thinking about gratitude as less of a moral instruction and more of a feeling tone. When I need to call upon the energy of appreciation, I need a sense of connection —connection with where I have come from and what I have achieved, connection with humanity, which inevitably drags me out of the "why is this happening to me?" mindset. The fact of the matter is that the ups and downs of living and dying happen to everyone. So sometimes, the challenge is getting or feeling connected.

I recently read a quote by Buddhist teacher Nikyo Niwano that pointed me toward accessing that feeling of gratitude. He compared lack of appreciation "…as being grateful for tea, coffee, or sake but forgetting to be grateful for the water from which they are all formed..." Well, shut my mouth.

 It was a reminder to get connected by stopping and seeing the connections, to see the connections to the things that were feeding me and giving me juice.

I am learning upright bass, and as an adult student who has some vocal musical dexterity, I am finding myself discouraged and not appreciating the progress that I am making. Why? Because I want it now!

Niwano's statement made some space in the grumble of ingratitude. It was an invitation to stop and make connections. I have been blessed to have many musical mentors who were also encouraged by their mentors when discouraged. I am on a musical path that others have been on. The wood of my bass came from a living tree manufactured in China by workers supporting their families (I am trying to think positively about Chinese working conditions). The person who sold me the bass made his living and supported his family with this bass, and on and on.

This exercise in making connections helped dissolve some of the crustiness and got me in touch with the expansive feeling commonly called gratitude. 

I hope, friend, you can find that feeling of gratitude when you need to. Not because it will make you a good person but because that expansive space makes you feel good, and you deserve to feel good.