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Christmas 1986. My 23-year-old sister, Jo, dives into her stack of presents. "Ooh, I love it! Thank you so much," she says. Then, with an apologetic little moue, she adds, "Did you save the receipt?"
Believe me, I adore my big sister. But every year it was the same. And like any little sister, I'd roll my eyes and mutter "ingrate" behind her back. Still, her apparent determination to return everything became a bit of a standing joke in our family.
Learning gratitude the hard way
That was then. This Christmas, I could give Jo a button on a string and she'd love it. Three bouts of thyroid cancer, a divorce and remarriage, family tragedies and age have left her grateful not just for thoughtful gifts, but for every breath she takes. Recently, I sent her a pretty glass dollar-store ornament. She immediately called from her home in Red Deer, Alta., deeply touched.
Jo has learned her lesson, albeit the hard way. But what of the rest of us? According to the World Values Survey -- a series of global surveys that social scientists have been running since 1981 -- people in Western countries earn and have more than ever, yet they are no happier than they were in the 1950s.
Indeed, we seem intent on complaining. Over the past 34 years, Hal Urban, an American author, speaker and high school teacher, has challenged 200,000 people to go 24 hours without griping, even to themselves. Only seven have ever pulled it off.
Why happiness is unattainable
Why so few? The reason is simple -- and ironic. We've come to depend more and more on material things, achievement and social standing to make us content. Yet the more we get, the more we need -- and the more unattainable happiness becomes.
Happiness, defined as the sense of contentment you get from having your expectations met, "is a very fleeting experience I wouldn't bother chasing," says Gregg Krech, an expert on a Japanese psychology called Naikan that aims specifically to nourish a sense of gratitude. Much more worthwhile, believes Krech, is the fulfilment that comes with cultivating gratitude for even small things. "Gratitude is not just about having fewer problems and more good things. It's about trying to change how you look at things. Your experience of life is not based on your life, but on what you pay attention to." In other words, changing your external circumstances in any way isn't going to make you feel more grateful or fulfilled. But changing your heart and mind will.
Consider the late Nobel Peace Prize winner and philosopher Albert Schweitzer. A gifted musician, he walked away from his affluent life in Germany to establish hospitals in Africa, where, despite setbacks including his wife's death and his being taken a prisoner of war, he worked selflessly for what he called "reverence for life." "Schweitzer wouldn't have argued that he had always been happy," comments Krech. "But at the end of his life, I expect he had a deep sense of meaning and fulfilment."
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