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Chapter 1: Gratitude

Writer's picture: Matthew J. CampMatthew J. Camp

“Words spoken before all others.” This is how the Haudenosaunee people of upstate New York practice gratitude. This book therefore starts and ends with gratitude. While thankfulness is sort of a relief for something that happened in your favor, gratitude is an appreciation for what you actually have, an acceptance of things the way they are right now. In fire-building, I feel grateful for the plants that once lived, that connected deeply to the Earth through their roots, that drew up water and nutrients and sent them up to the leaves, which majestically and magically transformed sunlight into energy through chloroplasts at the microscopic level. I’m grateful for this essentially free energy—the energy stored in that fallen branch that, in a fire, gives me warmth and light. Somehow that seemingly dead branch contains the sun, that fire in the sky, which gives life to every plant, animal, and person on the planet. Building a fire gives me a sense of accomplishment and makes me feel safe. It’s hard to do much else if we don’t feel safe.

In mindfulness—the set of practices that remind one to fully experience what’s really happening right now—gratitude may also be the beginning and end of the story, and probably also the middle. For example, when I sit down to meditate, I’m grateful to myself for having shown up, for taking some time, even ten minutes, to sit and be still. I’m grateful for the many ways of practicing gratitude—the full spectrum from sitting still in meditation to moving my body in yoga. I consider meditation and yoga two sides of the same coin. When I teach yoga, I refer to it as moving meditation, since each move of a limb is intimately connected to a conscientious inhale or an exhale. I also refer to meditation as frozen yoga, which sometimes gets a laugh from my students, especially those who remember the frozen yogurt craze of the 1990s.

Gratitude, like mindfulness, takes work. It requires me to constantly and consistently identify things that give me life and hope. In meditation, I kindly note all that arises without judgment—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Each thought, feeling, or emotion that arises is like a flame—maybe scary seeming but also warmth and light giving. Practicing gratitude requires me to find value and appreciation even when I’m not feeling particularly joyful. Just hearing Thich Nhat Hanh say “you are both happiness and depression” gives me a sense of expansiveness that leads me to know I’m big enough to experience joy, fear, anxiety, and depression; to sit in meditation; to breathe; and to allow those feelings to pass through.

Realizing my expansiveness is liberating. I remember when I was twenty-four, feeling stuck in an office job in New York City, visiting the great-aunt who had sold her property to David Brownstein. My great-aunt Anna was on her deathbed and wanted to know what was going on in my life. I shared with her that I was working on Park Avenue, but she must have picked up that I didn’t love the job. She lay in her hospital bed, and with a faraway look in her eyes, she said, “You’re bigger than this building. . . .” I didn’t know if she meant the building I was working in or the hospital we were in, but it was a phrase that has stuck with me since. Maybe she saw my aura, or spirit, or atoms dissipated around a physical place. Maybe it was something else. Either way, when I practice gratitude through meditation, yoga, journaling, therapy, walking, eating, praying, or anything else, noting the Buddhist notion of 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows of life and finding gratitude in, for, and with them helps me to feel free, to step outside myself, and to feel bigger than any building.

Nonjudgmental acceptance might seem oppositional to the way of an advocate. Accepting things exactly the way they are could come across as passive and unsavory to someone who wants to leave the world better than they found it. But acceptance is not the same as agreement. There are plenty of unjust situations, practices, and policies in our world that need our attention and effort. That’s where gratitude comes in. A grateful advocate will begin with kindly noting what’s around them. Before they even begin to act, they can account for what’s really happening around them—the political context, actors, and actions happening on small and big scales. Even in a dire situation, like a burning planet, there might be lots of assets to be aware of—youth activists, stories of permaculture farmers, elder wisdom, Indigenous actions, and small groups intentionally practicing ahimsa, or do-no-harm. If an advocate embeds gratitude into their daily work, they’ll start to notice all of these assets and might preempt parachuting in or being a white savior, as a lot of people like me sometimes do, in which a well-intentioned and privileged but underinformed outsider wants to create something new without knowing the people and organizations already doing the work. Sometimes all this sort of person needs to do is support the work and ask if the preexisting activists want amplification.

Gratitude is the fuel to propel advocates, from the grassroots to the highest political office. As a junior staffer working for two US senators, I read communications from constituents across the states of New Jersey and Delaware. These messages would come in via phone calls, emails, letters, faxes, or carrier pigeon (there was no Twitter then). We staffers were charged with dignifying each call, no matter how far out there, and documenting them in a database. At the end of the day, the constituents’ sentiments would be tallied for the chief of staff to share with the senator. How were people feeling about Bill #1234 that day? Those tallies would inform how the senator voted. Democracy in action. Senate staff with whom I currently work tell me this same process happens today, though with fewer faxes and more tweets. At least one political science study shows how easy it is for constituents to influence voting. In Bergan and Cole’s 2015 “Call Your Legislator” political science field experiment, constituent calls to legislators measurably influenced how a legislator voted. When the American political climate really began to become incendiary around 2016, a group of former congressional staffers came together and formed the Indivisible Group. Actually, even before forming that formal nonprofit organization, they just put all of their thoughts on how to make a difference in politics into a Google Doc called the Indivisible Guide. The guide writers emphasized the “power of thank you.” The majority of the calls and letters these former staffers got were negative or complaints. The former staffers knew how far a “thank you” went in sustaining their day-to-day jobs. In a more Machiavellian manner, they knew that when a person or an advocacy organization shares their gratitude with a member of Congress for acting on their behalf, the member (and staff) know that the organization is paying full attention to the advocacy process, from an initial ask to an accomplishment. Members of Congress work for us, and thank you notes serve as a form of accountability.

Powerful organizations will imbue gratitude in their daily practices, and it’s up to a leader to set the example. I worked for a college for fourteen years and didn’t know how much I appreciated an “attaboy” until we got a new president who made an effort to do this. One day, he wrote a short but personalized thank you note for something I did. It made my week. Considering that 95 percent of communications I get from higher-ups are related to tasks that cause a moment of anxiety, getting the occasional thank you note lets me know that I’m doing the right thing and gives me confidence and pride in my organization. Fuel for the fire.


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© 2024 Matthew J. Camp, RYT, PhD. 

Artwork by Adam Robert Dickerson

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