Margaret Visser - The Gift of Thanks: The Roots and Rituals of Gratitude

For Colinthis token.

Copyright 2008 by Margaret Visser

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First published in 2008 by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Visser, Margaret.
The gift of thanks : the roots and rituals of gratitude / Margaret Visser.
p. cm.
Originally published: Toronto : HarperCollins, 2008.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-15-101331-9
1. Gratitude. I. Title.
BJ 1533. G 8 V 57 2008
394dc22 2009014018

Printed in the United States of America

DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Nothing orders our lives so smoothly and so subtly as the almost invisible ordinary. The simple habit of saying "thank you," and the notion of gratitude that underlies it, can be a key to understanding many of the basic assumptions, preferences, and needs of Western culture. Yet most people think surprisingly little about gratitude, unless they are in the middle of experiencing it intensely, or until they feel seriously hurt by other people's failure to be grateful when they should be. We often express dismay at an apparent drop in the "standards" of gratitude in society as a whole (people have always tended to complain that gratitude seems to be dying out). But it continues to be a common virtue; otherwise, our society would show far worse signs of disintegration than it does. Ingratitude is excoriated today, as it always has been. And gratitude remains an omnipresent knitter-up of the fabric of modern life. We are rarely grateful enough for it.

My hope in writing The Gift of Thanks is to draw attention to the complexities as well as the importance of what happens every time gratitude is felt or its absence deplored. The book takes seriously the plural form of the English word thanks. Through the variety of its contents it reflects the multifaceted nature of gratefulness, starting with the simplest and apparently most trivial of its expressions, which is verbal thanking, and ending with gratitude at its highest levels.

A major theme running through the book is freedom. This should be made clear from the start because, as we shall see, the old idea that gifts are freely given and gratitude is a free response has come under attack. True, saying "thank you" still fulfills a requirement of conventional good manners: it is usually in our own self-interest, therefore, to produce signs of gratefulness, whether we are genuinely moved or not, for a favour done or a gift given. And the words "thank you" are so easily said that people who "know the rules" comply with scarcely a thought. Other peopleand not only giversexpect them to do so. Requirements, rules of etiquette, and a feeling that we "have to" certainly point to obligation rather than freedom. Yet a cardinal rule of gratitude remains: no matter how desirable it may be, a truly grateful response cannot be exacted. Gratitude must be freely given; otherwise, it might be a polite show, but it is not gratitude.

Trying to define and explain thankfulness has helped me understand my own reactions to many different encounters with other people: of admiration, disappointment, humility, relief, outrage, and amazement. I came to realize that gratitude (or the lack of it) was often involved in such episodes of feeling. Yet the closer I came to grasping what exactly gratitude was, and was not, the more complicated this emotion seemed, and the more implicated with other factors not obviously related. No sooner had I zeroed in on one facet of thankfulness than another appeared. The notion shifted, depending on which side of a transaction (the giver's or the receiver's) was considered, and from what point of view. Was gratefulness a virtueor simply an emotion, for which one could not be held responsible? Was it an action (repaying a favour)or a feeling? A spontaneously joyful reaction, a sense of reliefor something one was expected to produce on cue? Could one demand thankfulness from someone else? If so, why were people (myself included) so often and so blithely ungrateful? If not, why was I furious when I wanted gratitude and did not get it? Was it base of me to desire it?

Beginning to read around the subject, I was startled to discover how little had been written specifically addressing it. An enormous amount of modern research had been conducted into gifts, most of it treating giving either as irrational where it was not conventional, or as calculating, even downright hypocritical. We are supposed to be grateful for receiving gifts, yet thankfulness did not seem to be part of the story; gratitude nearly always went unmentioned. Where the subject was raised, it was often with suspicion, and with the presumption that gratitude must be something false, the product merely of social pressure. Perhaps giving thanks seems to such writers to have something archaic about it, the phrase itself bringing to mind religious liturgies or traditional events like Thanksgiving. But there have been exceptions to the unspoken rule, and these, almost as surprisingly, tend to exalt gratitude beyond measure. In the early twentieth century the German sociologist Georg Simmel claimed that gratitude is what in fact holds all of society together. He called it "the moral memory of mankind."

I decided to try to answer questions arising from my own observations, starting with the insistence with which we as parents teach our children to say "thank you," and considering the very different roles "gratitude" can play in cultures other than our own. There has been almost no attempt to bring together a consideration of thanking not only from a modern point of view, but also historically. So this book moves into the pre-literate past to look for signs of gratitude there, and goes on to examine not only modern writings in our own culture, but ancient ones as well: the Bible; the Greek and Roman philosophers, historians, and poets; medieval, Renaissance, and Enlightenment sources; folktales, novels, plays, and films. For giving and gratitude create and sustain memories; they and their opposites are natural drivers of myths and stories. These in their turn help us understand what thankfulness, and unthankfulness, can mean to us in everyday life.

Thanks are given to others, and, properly understood, are themselves a gift. One cannot adequately discuss gift-giving, therefore, and especially giving in return, without taking gratitude into account. The idea that being grateful is a source of pleasure is inscribed in the very etymologies of some of the words signifying gratitude. Does this meaning offer "happiness" as a reward for obeying social hierarchiesor does it point to something profoundly true? Under what conditions may gratefulness produce authentic happiness? Certainly gratitude can reach a pinnacle of human virtue, and when it does, its nature and reasons are astonishing, but clear. The lower levels, the ordinary instances of this feeling, on the other hand, are confused and murky, in need of elucidation.

In the end I found myself agreeing with Simmel that gratitude is of inestimable importance to all of society. I would go further and claim that it also contributes to the spiritual well-being of every person, but especially of those who are thankfulin the true meaning of the word. These days we have a new and particular take on gratitude, and an urgency about rediscovering deep sources for it that is all our own. Our modern society stands in special need of the gift of thanks.

***

I want to thank everyone who encouraged me to engage in writing this book and helped bring it to fruition. Many pages in it were written with particular friends in mind, remembering discussions with them on the subject of gratitude, and out of my experience of our relationships. I would like particularly to thank my agents Linda McKnight and Zoe Pagnamenta, my publishers Iris Tupholme of HarperCollins Canada and Rebecca Saletan of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in New York for their loyalty and support, my copy editor Allyson Latta, and my proofreader Rebecca Vogan. My thanks, too, to the John P. Robarts Research Library at the University of Toronto, for continuing to provide research facilities that are not easily matched elsewhere. Finally, I am grateful for the beauty of the countryside where this book was written, and for the presence on the horizon of Mont Saint-Barthelemy which presided over the entire process.