Embrace the feeling of gratitude

Across almost all traditions, November is the month of gratitude in this country. Obviously, that stems from the Thanksgiving holiday on the last Thursday of the month – who comes up with those formulas, anyway? Oh well, that’s a blog for another time.

In the last few years, I have become fascinated with the roots of our language; the etymology of words. Gratitude and grateful are derived from the Latin root gratus, meaning pleasing or favorable. Our word grace, comes from the very same Latin root. Grace, of course, in many households is the short prayer or blessing of thanksgiving offered before a meal. Grace denotes beauty and ease of movement.  Deeper in its definition is the thought that grace describes a disposition to be generous or helpful; an attitude of goodwill.

Looking more closely at the etymology of gratitude gives me a much broader appreciation of the “feeling” that the word inspires. When I am grateful for the blessings in my life, for all the good that I experience, I exhibit feelings of well-being, of generosity towards others, of life flowing with ease and grace and abundance – for myself, my beloved and all around me.

Yes, pleasing and favorable. As they say, an attitude of gratitude is far more pleasing and certainly favorable to an attitude of insufficiency or that something is lacking. What occurs to me is that if I can somehow skip the intellectualization of the idea of gratitude and simply embrace the feeling that it inspires, then I will get to enjoy that feeling far more often than if I am always trying to figure it out; discern the “why” of it.

The point is, I invite us all this Holiday Season to embrace the feeling of gratitude and savor the joy of our blessings, the companionship of our friends and loved ones and demonstrate compassion for everyone and everything around us. Gratus, grace, grateful, gratitude – pleasing and favorable – always!