Spirit of Gratitude in Thanksgiving: Then and Now

It’s been 365 days or more precisely 525,600 minutes since our last collective moment of pause and expression of gratitude observed annually on Thanksgiving.

And what a year it has been!

For many of us, last Thanksgiving was scaled down from what we have become accustomed to. Perhaps we couldn’t travel, weren’t able to see our families, or cook some of our favorite things. We may have also been adjusting to a loss or other changes brought on by the pandemic.

And as normalcy returns, and we again excitedly turn to old Thanksgiving traditions, we may also hope that the past year slowly becomes a distant memory.

But as I think back to this year, I find myself reflecting on the spirit of Thanksgiving- in finding all of the reasons to be grateful, even in a year that was so different from any other.

In August 2021, schools in North Carolina fully reopened for the first time since March 2020. As I walked through the empty halls before the students arrived, I experienced tangible anxiety and unease. We were all first-year teachers again, uncertain how to readjust. That stark reality became unsettling to my always-have-a-plan personality.

It was during this cloud of uncertainty, when the decoration in the window of the media center caught my eye:

“See the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors.”

I didn’t make anything of it in that moment as I was rushing to make preparations for the returning students. Then by the following week, students flooded the hallways, and we began to settle into this strange routine where none of us were certain of what we were doing, but trying our hardest to settle into the new normal. This strangeness led me to question my effectiveness at the end of each day. It exacerbated the unsettling feeling, which was now affecting my mood, sleep patterns, and making me seriously question if I even enjoyed my career anymore.

And yet, each time I walked through the school halls, the quote in the media center window kept grabbing my attention.

But how could I see the place I had spent years in with new eyes and extra colors? The truth was that when we returned, everything was different. And because it was so unusual, I realized that I needed to also approach this year with a different mindset. To be the best mentor I could be for my students, I would have to change the way I saw my day-to-day routine. Therefore, on the eighth day of the school year, as my anxiety became overwhelming, I paused. Something had to change. There is a concept in Hinduism known as antardrashti, or introspection. This single act allows us to pause, reflect, and determine the best course of action going forward in order to live our most meaningful life.

From this introspection, I realized I couldn’t allow myself to keep focusing on things that went wrong and would have to learn to look at the good. And so I decided to start a new photo project. This act would allow me to reflect and find at least one thing to be grateful for at the end of each school day.

And what a remarkable act it was! By actively interrupting anxiety with gratitude, I found myself untangling my thoughts from the negative emotions that had taken hold of me. I could end my day on a positive note and focus on everything that went right as opposed to the things that didn’t. I even made this gratitude public so that I could hold myself accountable to posting each day. And through this day-to-day practice, I realized I was actually training my brain to focus on the good, which in turn helped me regain inner peace and joy that I had been missing for so long.

This practice of gratitude is one that is rooted in science and one that has been extensively studied by experts in recent years.

In one such study, Dr. Joshua Brown and Dr. Joel Wong of Indiana State University studied 300 college students who were seeking mental health counseling. They randomly split the students into three groups — one group was told to write one letter of gratitude to another person each week for three weeks; one group was told to write about their negative emotions; and the last group was not given a writing assignment. All three groups continued to receive the counseling sessions. At the end of the experiment, they discovered that the group charged with writing letters continued beyond the required time and showed great progress in their mental wellness. The two researchers concluded four findings on why gratitude helps with wellness:

1. Gratitude unshackles us from toxic emotions.
2. Gratitude helps, even if you don’t share it.
3. Gratitude’s benefits take time.
4. In an fMRI, brain activity in those who practiced gratitude was different than those who did not- meaning gratitude changes the way our brains work!

This year has shown me that life can change drastically from what we had become accustomed to. I was so convinced that everything would become “normal” again as the pandemic slowly waned, that I vehemently held on to that idea. My inability to let go became the cause of the mental strain that I experienced at the beginning of the school year. This return to work and readjustment has shown me that we may not always be able to enjoy the things we once did in the same manner again. In fact, we may never return to that level of normalcy.

But does this mean we should spend the rest of our days reminiscing what once was and subject ourselves to mental anguish because things aren’t going to go back to how they exactly were? I don’t think so. My photo project taught me that we have found ourselves at the point where we are able to carve a new future rooted in this collective experience. And my introspection showed me that we can find the strength to go down this new path by reminding ourselves that there is so much to be grateful for at the end of each day, even if it’s in the small things- like the fact that we woke up, or the days the sun shone brightly, or that we have a cozy place to sleep each night. We can train our brains to focus on all the good things around us which can ease the wants of things we no longer have.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, let us give thanks for all that was, all that currently is, and all that will come to us. And let us begin the work of carrying this spirit of gratitude in our minds and hearts not only during this season but through every moment in the year ahead!

Sneha Patel, Raleigh, North Carolina
Educator