REFLECTIONS

You Are Grateful, But Are You Happy?

What on-and-off gratitude journaling taught me about the ultimate form of joy

Photo by Gabrielle Henderson on Unsplash

There was a time when I was a highly negative person. It was easy for me to blame circumstances for whatever “wrong” occurred in my life. I was always finding faults in everything and getting depressed about them.

It went so far that one of my exes broke up with me, citing the reason, “You always have a long face!” When I carefully analyzed my personality later, I figured out that I simply wasn’t being grateful enough.

My first trysts with meditation (or whatever I understood of that word at the time), followed by bursts of therapy sessions, all pointed to one direction I needed to take, and that was practicing gratitude.

And so, I began with a simple notebook (there were no gratitude apps back then) and started off with the process of gratitude journaling. The task was simple: each night, before I hit the bed, I was supposed to write down three things I was grateful for in the current moment.

For the first few days, it partially worked. Maybe it was the novelty of the exercise, or maybe I was forcing my mind to think in a different direction. I am not sure of the reason, but I did feel lighter when I went to sleep. However, the next morning, I was back to my negative, depressed self again.

“Maybe I wasn’t doing the exercise right,” I debated with myself, “Or maybe I don’t actually have a lot to be grateful about.” Either way, the practice died down in a few months as I couldn’t find anything new to be grateful for every night. I kept reiterating the same three things and was thoroughly convinced that barring these, everything else was negative in my life.

The phase also reminded me of my university days, when I used to play the song “Feel” by Robbie Williams on loop. I used to tell my then best friend that I related to this song. He just laughed at me. “What nonsense!” he said, “He must have gone through a lot to have written those lines. You’re just habitually depressed.”

As this memory resurfaced and I took several more attempts at trying to be grateful, I realized something. Maybe he was right, maybe I was habitually depressed. What I was seeking was true happiness, and mindlessly trying to list things that I was grateful for wasn’t fulfilling that objective.

Eventually, I entered the spiritual path. I was introduced to several new concepts surrounding happiness and joy. And even though I learned that feeling grateful for whatever I had in my life was part of one of the techniques, it wasn’t happiness by itself.

It was just one of the staircases I had to take to uplift my mind to the next floor, where the garden of happiness was laden with its chaste eternal fruits. It was the floor where several different staircases met, and unless I had successfully climbed all of those, the garden was inevitably out of reach.

This comprehension explained so much. I finally understood that writing three points in the gratitude journal is just one cog in the intricate wheel of pure bliss that comes from the Divine. It definitely is an important cog, but if it isn’t paired with service to others, compassion toward fellow beings, fearlessness, and trust in the Divine plan, it can only do so much to move the wheel by itself.

Having learned this, I took another hard look at my gratitude app (yes, I had ditched the notebook and upgraded to an app by this time). Were these fortified by other actions that define true happiness?

For instance, if I wrote in my gratitude journal that I was grateful for having a roof over my head, it immediately triggered an anxiety that the next morning I had to clean the whole house, take the trash out, and take care of all the small nitty-gritty of household activities.

Instead, if I went one step further, and as a footnote to my gratitude point, added that I was grateful for the home, and even though I was supposed to clean it, it was so that the bees would arrive at my flower beds, my family would stay healthy and hygienic, and whoever arrived at my doorstep would be greeted with a fresh, cool breeze and the warmth of orderliness, as a breather from their hectic and chaotic lives.

Above all, I would add to the point that even if I failed to clean it as per my high standards that caused me anxiety and unhappiness, I would fearlessly hold the Lord’s hand and offer whatever I could do so far, all to Him.

By doing so, the gratitude journal felt complete. It felt more of a holistic approach toward happiness than just trying out some symptom management.

And so, if you’ve been told to just start being grateful, know that it’s still possible to be worried and anxious even after listing the things you’re grateful for.

The real happiness?

It comes from getting out of yourself and serving others with whatever little you have to be grateful for.