Being grateful has become a vogue mental health meme. This is because a number of methodologically sound studies have demonstrated the psychological benefit of actively expressing and focusing on being grateful. The blessing of counting your blessings is as old as that axiom, and of course, common sense tells us it should be. The science though is part of a larger theme in psychological research we have seen over the last decade about the great subconscious power that context and perception can have over our behavior, so much so that it has called into question the very existance of freewill as we knew it.
Also notable in this body of research, and this is a bit of what I focus on for this iteration of Boxing Day, is the impact of gratitude on those that receive it. One reporter described the results saying that even though the sender thought the receiver would be only moderately pleased with their thank you, many recipients expressed their reaction as “ecstatic”. So show, especially those that hit the nail on the head with their gifts to you, how much it meant to you, and share your gratefulness with them. That will be a wonderful gift to them, and help close the circle of community I hope we all manage to participate in.
I, for one, partly due to having an aspie’s poor theory of mind, often disregard thank you’s as de rigueur and disingenuous social niceties, which indeed they often are, and so discount them, as i fear others may do as well, and so I don’t bother.
But this year I am making a point of letting folks know how really grateful I am for their gifts that I really am grateful for, as well as how grateful I am just to have them in my life. I think my tactic of being honest about such things, rather than succumbing to all that disingenuous hand waving, means that these too-rare expressions of social ritual by me should bring even more ecstasy to the recipients, or at least I sure hope so.
HAPPY HOLLY DAYS!
HOLLY DAYS 