Gratefulness – is that a word?
- Elodie
- June 1, 2023
Gratefulness, and gratitude; most people treat both words synonymously. According to Oxford Languages, gratitude means “the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.” Gratefulness as a noun however, doesn’t even have an entry in one of the renowned dictionaries, and is usually only referred to as its adjective “grateful”, which means “feeling or showing an appreciation for something done or received.” So, I gather gratefulness is seen as one of these abstract –ness nouns, which describe the state of a certain adjective by adding the suffix -ness. Gratitude comes from the Medieval Latin word gratitudo (“thankfulness”), whereas grateful comes directly from the Latin word, gratus, which means “pleasing, agreeable” and forms ultimately the origin of gratitudo.
Dry facts apart, I think it is debatable whether both words are synonyms or have a slight difference in meaning. I have my own interpretation of these concepts and intend to show you my reasoning behind it and how gratefulness (or gratitude of course) can support you in your everyday life.
For me, gratitude is an emotion, a mental state associated with feelings, behaviours and thoughts. It describes being thankful and is bound to a temporary circumstance. It is a time-dependent reaction at a specific moment, to a specific event/happening. Gratefulness for me is an attitude, a state of appreciation. It includes being thankful but is more than that. In my interpretation, it is a combination of gratitude and mindfulness. It is not bound to a specific moment or event; it takes on a perspective on life in its entirety. It involves being thankful for big and small things in life. It entails making the small, invisible things in life, that one usually takes for granted, visible and brings them forward into consciousness. It means being appreciative of life for no specific reason, like the decision that today is a good day even if circumstances point to the contrary. In fact, gratefulness is quite similar to the practice of affirmations, which refers to positive thinking and self-empowerment, believing that one has the power to achieve success by strongly believing it. It reminds you of the wealth that is already in your possession and not of what you are missing; it allows to celebrate and magnify the goodness. In short, gratefulness is a choice, perspective and intentional practice of gratitude.
So why would you want to invite more gratefulness to your life? Gratefulness helps to cope in difficult moments, and these difficulties in turn enable us to feel more grateful for life in general. It builds a sort of psychological immune system that buffers us in moments of crisis and makes us more resilient to stress. Also, gratefulness can boost the brain chemical dopamine, which makes you feel good and may even act as a small antidepressant. It puts things into perspective: you recognise how difficult life used to/could be, what you have overcome and where you are now. You acknowledge how life has shaped you in the person who you are today. Gratefulness, as so many things, is a practice. It is easy to be grateful when life is good, but if it is not, it is still worth the effort to practice it and the moment when you have most to gain out of a grateful perspective on life. To conclude, gratefulness may be considered as a re-evaluation of what is important in life, but is not supposed to be some kind of bypassing or denial. It is still crucial to acknowledge that life has its disasters and difficulties, losses and hurts. It is not about denying anger and sadness, but to recognise your power to transform an obstacle into an opportunity and to reframe loss into potential gain.