Imagine Tom, who always notices his glass is half empty while others’ glasses are full with something delicious. Tom sees slights and offenses around every corner. He believes he didn’t get the promotion because he intimidates his boss. The store clerk was rude to him because he was envious of his success. He is also the son who does everything for his parents while his siblings do nothing. Tom looks at those who have more than he does and thinks they’ve got some of what is rightfully his. And those who have less then he obviously haven’t worked as hard. All in all, Tom has enormous grievances about what he doesn’t have.
Kelly and Tom occupy the same world in many senses, yet their worlds are radically different. Gratitude is the key of Kelly’s life while grievance is Tom’s. Gratitude and grievance are not just emotions. Nor are they passing moods. Rather, gratitude and grievance guide their attention and interest; they set the terms for how Kelly and Tom see and meet the world. Gratitude and grievance play an important role in setting expectations and for assessing how well those expectations have been met. Gratitude and grievance become ways of living for Kelly and Tom respectively.
Someone like Kelly will see plenitude where others might see scarcity. While realities and actualities present challenges, they also present opportunities. She may be grateful for an opportunity even if it doesn’t pan out for her in the way she hoped. If her college professor encouraged her to apply for an incredibly competitive fellowship, Kelly might feel gratitude both for the professor’s confidence in her work and mentorship. She may also be grateful for the opportunity to reach for something she may never even have considered. Operating from gratitude may enable her to take some risks in the knowledge that she has nothing to lose by applying for that fellowship. To the contrary, she may gain good experience that will serve her well later and help her to achieve new goals. Gratitude expands a person’s world.
A world view based on gratitude also helps a person to stay right sized. Grateful people like Kelly recognize how others have assisted them over the years. Whatever successes they have, they acknowledge that other people played some role in them. This isn’t to deny or minimize their own hard work but rather to situate that work in a broader context. Perhaps a stranger showed them kindness or a teacher spent extra hours tutoring or a boss worked out a more flexible schedule so that Kelly could take a class she needed to graduate. When someone is able to acknowledge the help of others, this guards against an arrogance that everything she has is a consequence of all and only her own hard work. This is part of what it means to be right sized. Kelly may recognize that she’s now in a position to help others in the ways she herself had needed. This is the other way of being right sized. Being right sized in both these ways further expands the world of those who meet the world with gratitude.
Someone like Tom who operates from grievance will see scarcity where others see abundance. The possibility of disappointment is always front and center in his decision making; it carries far more weight than the possibility of a good outcome. Tom’s thinking is that he knows he won’t get the promotion, so why bother to waste time applying and give his boss the opportunity to pass him over. Grievance-based people like Tom become risk averse; they tend to stick with what they know even if it is not all that desirable because something different could be much worse. This is one way that the world view of grievance causes a person’s world to contract.
Tom also has a problem with being right-sized. If he genuinely believes everything he has accomplished is solely his own doing and that he’s achieved so much despite unfair treatment, he will over-estimate himself. He has difficulty seeing that others have helped him because most of his interactions with others are through a filter of offense or grievance. He also lacks the perspective to be able to see the successes of others because he believes they have been give benefits or aids that he hasn’t. He sees himself as always being in a disadvantaged position relative to others. This sense of being disadvantaged means Tom will have a difficult time identifying situations where he could help others or where he has advantages. Tom’s inability to be right-sized contributes to the contraction of his world.
While not explicitly about gratitude and grievance, being sight-sized, and expanding and contracting a world, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus (50-135 AD/CE) offers a powerful recommendation of how one ought to meet and respond to the world. He says
Remember to conduct yourself in life as if at a banquet. As something being passed around comes to you, reach out your hand and take a moderate helping. Does it pass you by? Don’t stop it. It hasn’t yet come? Don’t burn in desire for it, but wait until it arrives in front of you. Act this way with children, a spouse, toward position, with wealth—one day it will make you worthy of a banquet with the gods.
Don’t be a person who watches how much others take from the platter and get mad in advance that it will be gone by the time it reaches you. You won’t enjoy the delights already on your plate.