What Are You Most Grateful for in 2020?
/I wrote about the emotion of hope a few weeks ago. This time, I wanted to talk about another powerful emotion - and that is gratitude.
Some days, I find it hard to tap into gratitude. I watch the news and see the lines of people waiting for food at food banks. When I drive around my town, I see the number of homeless encampments ballooning and more and more local businesses shuttering day after day. I think about my loved ones and my own family, wondering how we will fare during these times.
To keep myself from going down the rabbit hole of negativity, I take a moment and reflect on what is positive in the world. I have to remind myself that despite all the pain, we will get through this pandemic. With the help of gratitude, I know we'll get through these dark times.
Reflecting back on the past year, at the top of my gratitude list would be a summer Zoom gathering.
Early in July, my friends Nicole and Nick organized a reunion of our playwriting class. We had all taken an advanced playwriting class with Julie McKee at HB Studios in New York City. I took the class for five years before I had my daughter and then moved to Portland. The Zoom call included my classmates, many of whom I had not seen in over six years, as well as other playwrights who had joined the class after I left.
On our call, we talked about class memories, our writing projects, and our time in quarantine. We got a chance to thank Julie for her disciplined teaching style and her skills-based approach, agreeing that her class had taught us the foundations of storytelling like no other writing class. Of course, as playwrights, we also lamented about how much we missed theater.
One of the best parts of the call was also the saddest. One of the playwrights shared that our friend Doug had passed away tragically from cancer. Doug was an actor who came religiously to class, bringing to life our most beloved characters through his readings. He was so talented and dedicated to the craft of acting, it was hard not to be enamored by his love of the art. I affectionately recalled how this 30-something-year-old white actor depicted my character Dr. Park, a bombastic 65-year old Korean man, attempting his best pronunciation of Korean words with grace. We all had a moment to reflect on this man's beauty and share stories about our memories of his bright light.
That day, I felt so much gratitude for Doug and my writer friends, people who had seen my shitty first drafts and nurtured my drafts to a better place. These were the writers who showed up at my full-length readings and cheered me on. Without them, I don't think I would have ever had the courage and confidence to put my fingers on the keyboard and type. My memories of that sacred creative time spent together are what keeps me writing.
I am keenly aware that this meeting of ours might not have happened if we weren't in the middle of a global pandemic. We all know how it goes. Life gets busy. With households to manage, jobs to do, children to care for, the to-do list is long. Had it not been for the pandemic, we may not have taken the time out to connect and memorialize a fellow artist. When I think about this call, gratitude wells up inside of me.
Gratitude is something that can be so life-affirming and perspective-changing. The power of gratitude has been well-documented. Here's just some of its empowering effects:
Gratitude allows you to celebrate the present moment.
Gratitude blocks toxic emotions. When you are feeling grateful, it's hard to feel negative emotions like fear and anger.
Gratitude helps you become more stress-resilient so that you can cope better in times of stress.
Gratitude strengthens your social ties and self-worth.
In a study about how gratitude affects our sense of well-being, Joel Wong & Joshua Brown at Indiana University surveyed 300 adults, mostly college students who were receiving mental health counseling. They broke the group down into three groups, each with different directives:
Group 1 was asked to write one letter of gratitude to another person each week for three weeks,
Group 2 was asked to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings about negative experiences, and
Group 3 had no writing activity.
What was the result? Those who wrote gratitude letters reported significantly better mental health four weeks and twelve weeks after the writing exercise ended.
Wong and Brown also analyzed the words used in the two writing groups. Not surprisingly, those primed to write gratitude letters used more positive emotion words, more "we" words, and less negative emotion words than the other writing groups. But according to the researchers, using more positive words or "we" words were not what predicted greater mental health; it was the lack of negative emotion words that did. So, one conclusion is that by practicing gratitude, it's harder to ruminate over negative emotions.
This study illustrates the profound effect gratitude has on our mental health. When we get into that high energetic state of gratitude, the energy helps sustain our mood and outlook. That's why many self-help gurus suggest keeping a gratitude journal to improve one's conditions in life.
It's easy to feel down about the pandemic. In Oregon, the governor has ordered another shelter-in-place ordinance to flatten the curve. It wasn't something that surprised me since health experts warned us of a rise in infection rates over the winter months. But still, not seeing friends and experiencing day after day of gloomy wet weather have taken a toll on my well-being.
Breathe. Reflect. Slow down. Connect. These are the things that the pandemic has forced me to do.
Gratitude is among the many emotions that I am spending my time reflecting on during this time. Of course, there are times where other emotions like fear, sadness, and anxiety take over. But then I think about what I am grateful for, and feelings of peace and happiness well up inside me. These days I'm grateful for connecting with old friends, rekindling my love of classical music, having dance parties with my daughter, getting back to writing, and having time to reflect on my business.
When my daughter was little, we used to say everything we were grateful for before we went to bed. My daughter would name every person that she knew. We still do this ritual now, but we have a more elaborate ritual that includes gratitude and other emotions. For many years I kept a gratitude journal, but now that this practice is anchored in me, I spend time reflecting on gratitude whenever it strikes me - in morning meditation, during the day, or while falling asleep.
Here's my challenge to you. Think of all the things you are grateful for in 2020 and write them down. Think about the people and situations that have positively impacted your life during the pandemic. Think about the people working in your community to help keep you safe. Think about all the good happening in the world.
Leave me a comment and tell me what you are grateful for these days.