How to show an attitude of gratitude?

Gratitude is one of the essential traits that you must express to the person who is instrumental in your growth. In reality, many people forget to show their gratitude wholeheartedly to the other person. They think what is the big deal?  For example, you are very thirsty after returning back to your office from an outdoor work.  The office boy hands over a glass of water and you quench your thirst. Instead of telling a word of “thank you”, you simply return the glass. The other person, the office boy, of course, does not expect, but if you offer a simple appreciation, it shows your attitude of gratitude.  This gratitude must emanate from the heart. You may even express through your gesture.  Remember one thing, just for the purpose of expressing gratitude, you should not do; you must express with sincerity. In our daily interactions, we all utter words and show gestures, but mostly in a casual manner. By expressing gratitude in a casual way, you are not only disregarding the other person’s service, but also you are showing your pride of superiority complex. This gratitude is a power of expression of any human being.  When you become grateful to a person for his help, you tend to be loyal to him throughout your life. You do your best to show respect to him, hear his advices, follow his path of living and emulate him. All these things are done by you out of your respect. You develop a gratitude for him.

This gratitude is a basic human emotion deeply rooted in all of us. It is required to have a conducive relationship within the family, society and friend circles. You may be knowing that there is a day earmarked as “World Gratitude Day,” and on this day, we are supposed  to call upon  to show gratitude to others as we are mostly selfish and  want to be always busy in our own state of affairs. It is altogether a different aspect whether we celebrate this day or not, but God, the supreme power, wants all of us to follow this behavior. 

We live in a world where the outlook of people completely rests on selfishness. We even don’t show gratitude to our parents, our teachers and even our well wishers who is contributing incessantly in our growth.  Shakespeare had explained the critical nature of ingratitude in his famous play “King Lear” when the two daughters of the old king did not bother to show any gratitude to their father even. There are end numbers of instances where people become ungrateful to their well wishers.  Even today, we have always shied away to recognize the help of other persons, even after availing the same. Not only we fail to recognize, but also we malign them, if any chance comes. This is our nature. We are advancing in technologies, we have learned operating many new gadgets and we become prosperous in information technology, but we are yet to get the mastery in the art of showing gratitude. What could be the reason that makes us so ingratitude?  The basic reason is that we are very much egoistic. We feel if we show gratitude to the people who has done good things for us, we are downgrading ourselves in his eyes and then to the society. The other persons who have benefited us will take the upper hand. So, we find out a shelter of ungrateful and we escape through that route. Not only that, we also find fault of those persons, who earlier helped us. Vidyasagar, the great academician when heard that someone had abused him, he simply said, “I do not remember to have benefited him in any way; why should he speak ill of me?” Vidyasagar though helped many people in various ways, but never expected any gratitude in return.  He knew that today someone would show gratitude, but on the very next day, the same person would criticize him.  This is the nature of human being in general.

When Jesus Christ obtained the divine power of healing, he cured 10 leapers at the time when leprosy was an incurable disease.  Out of these ten patients, nine left  without even thanking him. Only one person waited to express his thanks to Jesus. When Jesus inquired of him what the reason of his waiting is, he simply replied, “To thank you for divine healing.” Jesus then said with all his humility, “Don’t thank me, thank God, because His healing power has worked through me.”  This is a glaring example, that we should not hope to get  gratitude from others in return of our services At the same time, whenever the opportunity arrives, you must show gratitude after accepting the help of the other persons. In general, most of us, because of our tradition and culture, express gratitude to our superiors either through words or gestures. We also show love for animals. We often show gratitude through gesture to inanimate objects from which we get the benefits.  There are many examples of our tradition in India to show respect to a cow as Gomata and rivers as mothers and mountains as fathers. In some parts of the country, we even consider trees and plants as deities. We treat these non-living beings as  respected entities and we worship them with great reverence.  All these  expressions are a part of our gratitude for something from whom we get benefits regularly or periodically.

Let us show our gratitude whenever possible and in whatever way it suits each other.  The gratitude is one of the major traits of human beings, which we seldom show, but it must be expressed abundantly.