As I’ve continued to turn towards Gratitude this year, (my chosen theme for 2022), I’ve noticed a clue as to why gratitude is so difficult for so many of us.
The word “gratitude” comes from the Latin gratus which means “thankful” or “pleasing.” While the first part of this definition feels obvious, the “pleasing” part strikes me as being a big part of the challenge of gratitude.
Feeling gratitude means, in part, feeling pleasure. It means noticing, affirming, and appreciating the warm, soft, airy, and spacious bodily sensations we feel when we take a hot shower or a delicious bite of food, or smell last night’s rain, or remember a hug from a loved one, or smile at a job well done. Gratitude asks us to notice what we physically experience when we think that this moment is good.
This practice can be complicated for people who have grown up in a culture that teaches us that the body’s experience of pleasure is sinful at worst and unimportant at best. Religious traditions the world over have claimed that the body must be denied, disciplined, and ultimately transcended. In ancient Greece, Socrates claimed that “the body is the prison of the soul.” Western Christian and Enlightenment narratives have reduced women and black and brown people to their bodies, a sign of their inferiority.
I don’t know about you, but for me, all this makes affirming, or even noticing, my body’s sensations of pleasure feels sort of…dangerous. Like doing so makes me stupid, simple or shallow. Perhaps this is why Brené Brown has found joy to be one of the most vulnerable emotions. (Addicts, she notes, are more likely to relapse after an experience of intense joy than intense sorrow.)
And yet, paying attention to those pleasurable sensations is how we actually feel grateful. A practice of gratitude is a call back into the body’s pleasure.
If we want to experience more gratitude, we need to practice noticing, valuing, and lingering in pleasure. We need to allow ourselves to welcome the hum on our skin when it touches soft sheets, the crackle of excitement when we learn something new, the swell of our chests when we watch our kids play. We need to open ourselves to the vulnerability of joy and then to reassert how thankful we are for it.
Do you have a hard time experiencing bodily pleasure? Does it make you feel vulnerable? How do you deal with it? Share your answer in the Mother Den community.
Danielle LaSusa Ph.D. is a Philosophical Coach, helping new moms grapple with what it means to make a person. She is the creator of The Meaning of Motherhood course, and co-creator and co-host of Think Hard podcast, which brings fun, accessible, philosophical thinking to the real world. To join her mailing list, subscribe here.
© Copyright Danielle LaSusa PhD, LCC, 2021. All rights reserved.
