20. Feeling Grateful

Gratitude is a feeling that depends on thinking: it is ignited in the receiver's heart not only by another's kind action but also by his or her own attention, awareness, understanding, reflection, and openness to seeing and accepting the goodness of somebody else. When the receiver becomes in turn a giver, this feeling of gratitude develops into a pivot between the first favour and the next; it begins as a reaction and a recognition, and then—after further reflection—turns into a motivator. The fact that gratitude is an emotion helps it to motivate. In conjunction with thinking, it produces a decision. This operation might be mysterious,¹ but the word gratitude does not refer only to the action of "giving something back" in itself. Giving back is showing gratitude for the benefactor to see and perhaps for others to see as well; the "real" gratitude, the motive for returning a favour, lies hidden in the heart, and therefore requires verbal expression as well as an appropriate externalization in action.

That is not how people have always seen gratitude. In the past, and still sometimes today, people have thought of gratitude as above all an action (returning a favour) that is not only virtuous in itself, but also valuable to society. It is therefore "called for" in a beneficiary: the obligation was likely to be supported by the approval of other people, or their censure in the case of a failure to do the right thing and reciprocate. "There is no duty more indispensable than that of returning a kindness," writes Cicero in a book whose title means "On Duties," and in a later chapter he adds, "All men detest one forgetful of a benefit."² He says nothing about what emotion the person returning a kindness might experience, although he does not deny either that a receiver ought to feel something for his benefactor. The emphasis, however, is squarely on the need to respond by returning the kindness. Seneca is capable of seeing a spontaneously grateful reaction to a favour as a feeling, but even for him what the receiver owes is uppermost in his mind: "He who receives a benefit gratefully (grate) repays the first instalment on his debt."³ Good people did the right thing; how they felt about it was on the whole beside the point. We have seen that in some cases, such as feudal regimes, "gratitude" meaning "returning a benefit" was more strictly obligatory still.

This was certainly not the Judeo-Christian tradition in its essence. There, what people feel, what their dispositions are, and what they intend are of prime importance. This does not mean that action will not occur. On the contrary, right feeling must lead to virtuous action: "by their fruits you shall know them."⁴ Thomas Aquinas writes in the thirteenth century that gratitude was more about feeling than action—even though recompense was wherever possible the expression of gratitude, for "repaying favours is a part of justice." Where gratitude is appropriate, a poor person is as capable of virtue as a rich one. She can at least thank the giver and honour him, even if she cannot "give back" an equivalent gift or favour. In every case it is the disposition that matters, and therefore the freedom to give and to give back is essential.⁵ Amount, in and of itself, is never the point: the desperately poor widow's two small coins are "more" than all the gifts out of the superfluity of the rich.⁶ It is the widow's generous intentions that count.

Philosophers of a utilitarian bent have usually taken gratitude to be a convenient producer of profit in the shape of an exchange of goods. The receiver's duty to give back is what encourages potential givers to be benevolent in the first place; they will not give unless they can be sure they will get something out of it. "Of all Voluntary Acts, the Object is to every man his own Good," writes Hobbes; "of which if men see they shall be frustrated, there will be no beginning of benevolence, or trust; nor consequently of mutuall help; nor of reconciliation of one man to another; and therefore they are to remain still in the condition of War. "⁷ Without gratitude-as-reciprocation, society will eventually descend into chaos and violence. "Gratitude," meaning the return of a gift or favour, was therefore, as we have already seen, what Hobbes calls "The Fourth Law of Nature."

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is often admired for pointing out that "gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but not a right to be exacted."⁸ The context of this remark is a passage about obedience to one's father: "By the law of nature, the father is the child's master no longer than his help is necessary;...from that time they are both equal, the son being perfectly independent of the father, and owing him only respect and not obedience." Rousseau sees the crucial distinction between the role of the grateful person and that of the one deserving gratitude. He also understands that gratitude can be offered only in freedom. Yet he still takes "gratitude" to mean a dutiful action rather than a feeling.

Adam Smith, father of modern economics, also wrote a book on moral sentiments, by which he meant feelings resulting from imaginative thought.⁹ In it, he turned away from the prevailing belief that duty and reason are all that count when it comes to virtue, and thereby made an important step towards the validation of the emotions that arrived soon after, with the Romantic movement. But he kept Cicero's connection between what one should do and what we imagine other people will think and say if we fail to come up to scratch. Smith, indeed, elevated human sensitivity to the opinions of others into a total explanation of how and why morality works. He was modern in his insistence on delving into the individual's apprehensions of reality. But for Smith "gratitude" almost always meant "reward"—and this, significantly, needs to be explained in modern discussions of his book. Other people "show gratitude" when we behave well—that is, they reward us with their approbation, and they punish us with "resentment" when we are bad. His view is therefore heavily relativist: everything depends on what a particular society deems "proper." The ancient "shame culture" component of this view of morality is evident. But so is the new emphasis on how people—even those merely watching a transaction—feel.

In the realm of politeness, it is still the case today that a receiver who does not feel gratitude should nevertheless thank the giver verbally and later provide a favour or a gift in return. Politeness is "shame culture"; it cares about social propriety before it cares about sincerity, or even morality. A known thief, provided he is clean, properly dressed, a skilled conversationalist, and mannerly, is far more likely to be invited to a polite dinner party than is a filthy, ragged, inarticulate beggar who is innocent of any crime. For it is manner and appearances that normally count before morals or feelings, among people who practise a preferential option for gentility. Making a social gaffe—eating with one's mouth open, bringing up the wrong subjects in conversation, being smelly—is likely to be unforgivable, essentially because morality is not the criterion: manners are. And a judgment based on shame is without redress: people with poor manners will find themselves definitively excluded from polite society, not asked back if they were ever asked in the first place.

What one does rather than what one feels is what matters where politeness is the point. A polite person can therefore say "thank you" and not mean it—she may even go through dissembling motions, looking as though she feels grateful. Such behaviour is much less offensive than making no response at all; it can indeed be a form of respect offered to the goodwill of others, where we really cannot summon up an emotional reaction to it. But still, given the basic suppositions of our "guilt" culture, expressing gratitude that is not meant and returning a favour entirely out of duty may be polite, but they do not constitute gratitude. "Not every person who fulfils the duties of gratitude," wrote La Rochefoucauld, "can flatter himself on that account that he is grateful."¹⁰

Politeness rules have their own wisdom. For example, in the course of polite human interaction, ordering and asking are essentially discourteous acts: one imposes or interrupts in order to perform them. They therefore need to be hedged in polite conversation ("Would you mind very much if I asked you to close the window?"): as a general rule, the longer one takes to say something, the politer. Thanking a person for doing the favour requested ("Thanks," the shortest and simplest response, is casual and therefore intimate) serves to repair the tiny rift or imbalance that has been created by asking. There is rarely any feeling involved, yet repeatedly being "rude" and then not smoothing things out, by apologizing if necessary, can lead to serious—that is, emotional—annoyance, and even an eventual breakdown of relations.¹¹ It is usually advisable to behave politely simply to avoid the unpleasantness that is likely to ensue otherwise.

The reasoning behind the rule is that saying "thank you" and "giving back" are, even today, social acts with desirable consequences that include goodwill and the cohesion of the group. Not thanking and not giving in return, especially after receiving a considerable favour, can cut links, discourage giving, and hurt feelings. They also scandalize onlookers: society strives to see to it that while not showing gratitude is a game that might be tempting, it is seldom worth the candle. Society can, of course, reward and punish only gratitude and ingratitude that are shown, for feelings lie out of sight unless they are expressed; what onlookers see, name, and judge is most obviously what is given, what is said, what is done. Society also lays down rules of politeness, as we have seen, for how to show one's gratitude, especially in public. Thanking has to be appropriate to the services given. A simple hug or even a nod and murmured thanks might be enough, while sending a large bouquet of flowers could be insufficient: politeness rules are acutely conscious of demonstrations that are either overdone or inadequate. It depends on what has been given or done, how much it cost the giver, how much it means to the recipient, and what the relationships are between the people concerned.

But despite the advisability of proportion and of savoir faire generally, ordinary modern people persist in thinking that the emotional component of thankfulness is what gratitude "really" is. "Giving back," in this view, should result from the primary facts, which are the understanding and the emotion arising from it. Without this motivation, the actions of saying "thank you" and returning a favour (which the opposite camp considers to be the whole point) seem merely conventional at best, and certainly not genuine gratitude. This belief prevails in part because, in a society where social pressures are relatively weak, emotion is expected to take up the slack: it has to provide an internalized motivation for reciprocity, in the form of grateful feelings. Freedom and individualism, as we saw, are linked to the likelihood of people feeling what we mean by "gratitude." Deeper down, we adhere to an ancient tradition of insistence on motivation and on what we really feel. Saint Paul writes that it is possible to give away all I have to feed the poor, or to be burned alive for my beliefs—but if these things are not done out of love, they are worthless.¹²

Feelings, attitudes, and motives matter at least as much as actions do; indeed where gratitude is involved, they often matter more. It is possible for someone to be deeply grateful and yet not reciprocate because there is no opportunity or no means to do so. Even showing gratitude by saying we are thankful can be trumped by sufficient proof of emotion, provided that it is sincere. Emily Dickinson says that a person can feel so grateful that she is unable to speak; she weeps instead, and her tears, insisting on being shed, are a purer expression of her soul's gratitude than any words—or deeds—could be:

To try to speak, and miss the way
And ask it of the Tears,
Is Gratitude's sweet poverty,
The Tatters that he wears—

A better Coat if he possessed
Would help him to conceal,
Not subjugate, the Mutineer
Whose title is "the Soul."¹³

The demand for feeling is, of course, a demand for sincerity. "Action can be coerced," wrote Erving Goffman, "but a coerced show of feeling is only a show"¹⁴—and a "show," which in highly regulated and formal societies may be enough, is not sufficient at all in a society such as our own, which prizes the egalitarian, the spontaneous, the casual.¹⁵ And sincerity cannot be forced: the soul is a "Mutineer" and will not be subjugated. Gratitude in particular makes, as we have seen, a particular claim to be given gratis: it insists that a giver who does not receive thanks from a receiver has no right to demand it. One reason for this insistence on freedom is that feelings cannot be produced to order, and it is real (not pretended) feeling that counts. (It is interesting that certain muscles of the face that we employ whenever we make a genuine smile are impossible to move by direct intention alone. An actor can produce a genuine smile—but only if she first and wholly enters the part she is playing.)

A person might recognize another's benevolence and be truly grateful for that, even if the gift itself does not particularly please. It is possible also to feel grateful for benevolence in and of itself, without a specific manifestation of it; this is common between close friends, who can rest upon the history of their loving relations. For somehow one has to have been convinced that the benevolence is there. It is hard to take seriously a claim that someone is either grateful or loving when there is no action to show it. That is one practical reason why people show their love by acts of kindness and "prove" their gratitude, if they can, by doing something in return. But our definition of "gratitude" is still not merely the action, but the emotion and the thought that give rise to it.

We should not be too quick, however, to think that where the other point of view—the privileging of action—prevails, people ignore feeling altogether. Emotions are felt by the individual, and the social fabric may count, quite simply, for more. Indeed, the feeling component of gratitude, especially in stories (where readers and audiences "look on" rather than take part in the action), seems often to have been understated because it was so obvious, and even because it was so deeply felt. The audience is left to divine the feelings from their results: it is a powerful literary device for tapping into the readers' and the listeners' own emotions. Homer's Iliad, for example, begins with the anger of Achilles over his slighted honour, and his determination to force the other Greeks to recognize his worth. His mother, the goddess Thetis, implores Zeus on his behalf to let the Trojans prevail in the war until the Greeks are forced to beg the insulted and sulking Achilles to come back and fight. After all, Thetis reminds Zeus, her son is fated to die young; he deserves this honour.

The demand is outrageously partial: the mother has only her son's interests at heart and cares nothing for the sufferings her request entails for the rest of the Greek army. Why then does Zeus bow his head and agree to intervene, permitting all the carnage that ensues? Why do gods and men accept his decision without a murmur, when they are so quick to complain on other, less egregious occasions of the gods' meddling on behalf of their human sons and favourites? The answer is that Zeus is deeply grateful to Thetis, to the point where he cannot refuse her request. Homer's audience knew the story, and the poet needed only to mention the facts obliquely in order to move listeners deeply; modern people have to be reminded of the background.

Both Zeus and Poseidon were in love with Thetis, longed to marry her, were rivals for her hand. But Themis, goddess of prophecy, revealed that Thetis was fated to give birth to a son greater than his father. She advised that Thetis should marry a mortal instead of one of the greatest of the gods, so that her son—greater than his father—would, however heroic, merely die as mortals do. Thetis obeyed, married the mortal Peleus, and gave birth to Achilles. In agreeing to do this Thetis had averted the downfall of Zeus and with that the overthrow of the cosmos. Homer mentions this story only a few times. Zeus is never made to express his feelings. Homer expects us, however, both to know Zeus's reasons and to imagine how he felt. How could Zeus refuse the request of this goddess whom he loved, who had saved his life, who had rescued the universe? Zeus's gratitude for the selfless sacrifice of Thetis, who nevertheless so intensely loved her human, brilliant, and doomed son, broods over the entire Iliad.¹⁶

The folktales of the Grateful Lion, the Grateful Dolphins, or the Kind and the Unkind Girls similarly say nothing about what the protagonists feel: the characters show the depth of their gratitude through their actions. This is an aspect of the genres of folktale and myth—and it is still a powerful narrative method, even in the novel, which permits an author to tell us directly what is going on in the minds of the characters. Novelists today are aware that it is usually wiser, more vivid, more concrete, more provocative of the reader's engagement to show how their characters feel through an external economy of gestures, actions, and speech, than to keep the readers passive by telling them what exactly those feelings are. When we are leading our own lives, however, we cease to be watchers; we are subjects and agents, responding with feeling to external events. As far as gratitude is concerned, the "drama" of the return gift is our own to perform, and it springs from the emotion we feel in response to another's goodness.

We saw that scientists, even social scientists, have not, until recently, paid much attention to studying the emotions. But even after the rise of an intense academic interest in the emotions, gratitude has taken extra decades to be considered worthy of investigation. That is because, given the scientific definition of an emotion, gratitude has difficulty fulfilling the conditions required. For example, thankfulness might be profoundly felt, but it is rarely a turbulent emotion—and as we have seen, emotions are defined as agitation. We are told that the autonomic nervous system shows no distinctive patterns of activity for it, although researchers repeatedly and understandably complain that it is difficult to precipitate gratitude in a laboratory setting in order to measure it. Perversely for an emotion, furthermore, gratitude is supposed to last. "I'll never forget your kindness," grateful people say and mean it, unaware that scientists believe emotions must always be sudden, involuntary, and short-lived. And then gratitude necessarily arises out of relationships with other people. Worse, it requires reflection and intentionality: it is not, therefore, a purely physical, automatic arousal. Expressing thanks is often simply a matter of etiquette—that is, it can depend entirely on will and habit, and require no emotion at all. Gratitude, complex and multilayered, reaches deeply into culture and social life, with characteristics such as "appropriateness" attached to it. And finally, gratitude has not counted as an emotion because, unlike rage or terror, disgust or contempt, it is said to lack a facial expression of its own.

But grateful people do in fact look grateful; their facial expressions often change in the course of the realizations involved in thankfulness. A person conscious of having received a great favour typically becomes silent, her features still. Should her benefactor be present, she looks into his eyes and often smiles: pleasure is an essential component of gratitude.¹⁷ The receiver may embrace the giver and may also, as in Emily Dickinson's poem, be moved to tears. There could be a surprised reaction before the features grow still: surprise and relief are major triggers of grateful emotions. Thankful people typically experience the favour offered by the giver as unexpected, undeserved, or both.

Silence is for thought: the grateful receiver realizes the extent of the favour, the cost to the giver, the value of this goodness to herself. There will also be trust involved, and openness in the expression of her face, as she freely accepts indebtedness, while perhaps already making a resolution to give something in return when an opportunity arises. In our culture, deliberately looking into another's eyes is a powerful expression of connectedness: gratitude's most important component is relationship accepted with joy. And finally, the grateful person says "thank you" and may add an expression of "warm"—that is, genuinely felt—appreciation.

Careful experimenting has been deemed necessary to establish that people are more likely to thank others who help them when eye contact occurs between them. Psychology students at the University of Bristol stood guard, unbeknownst to passersby, at swing doors in the library. As somebody passed through, an experimenter would rush forward and hold the door open for him. Two experiments involved a researcher going in the same direction as the passer-through, and two required an approach to the passer-through from the opposite direction. It was found that a person going through swing doors behind somebody moving in the same direction (that is, the experimenter in front was walking with his back to the innocent "participant") would very rarely say "thank you" for having the door held open for him; he did say "thank you" if the person in front turned round as he held the door open, or if he was approaching from the opposite side and looked into the "participant's" eyes. On all occasions where eye contact took place, the participant thanked his thoughtful benefactor. The thanks grew more emphatic the more effort was spent by increasingly effusive door-openers—provided they looked into the eyes of their beneficiaries. (An observer stood unobtrusively by the wall in front of the door opening, to watch the lips of the passer-through and to take notes.) It was proven in this manner that people thank when eye contact is made, but usually say nothing at all when presented only with the back of a helper's head.¹⁸

Humility is often a prerequisite for the joy of gratitude, since the receiver temporarily accepts the lower place. We recall Emily Dickinson's picture of gratitude as "himself" poor and wearing tatters; that is because a deeply grateful person typically feels unable to respond adequately to extraordinary goodness in another. Facial expressions arising from thankfulness are in some cultures augmented—or replaced—by external gestures expressing humility, in the actual lowering of the body. Nodding the head, an abbreviation of bowing movements, is for us a gesture of acknowledgement, and is often part of our demonstrating thankfulness. When we shake hands as a formal gesture of gratitude, it is a symbol of admiration, benevolence, and gratitude on both sides, through a dramatization of connectedness in the clasping of hands. The giver of an honour feels grateful to the one honoured for what she has achieved, and the receiver for her part feels grateful for the honour.

The heart, as we saw, has been scientifically proven to be important for the feeling of emotions, just as non-scientists have always claimed. People say in English that they speak and relate most sincerely and most directly "heart to heart"; that is, they communicate what is interior to them with each other in total openness and trust. The heart is thought of as "central" to a person, although this organ lies in fact high up in the body and usually to the left within the human chest. It is also imagined as "deep" within and as such as the seat of who we most genuinely are. We should perhaps be grateful to our culture for continually suggesting to us that at our core (the word is from the Latin for "heart") we are loving and benevolent. When we express thanks, we want to assure others that we are "warm" and sincere. We therefore say that our gratitude is "heartfelt" or, more extravagantly, that we are thankful "from the bottom of our hearts."

Gratitude, as a feeling, is something interior to the person, yet it has exterior manifestations and consequences. Parents teach their children gratitude—first to show it, then to feel it. We saw how the day that a child spontaneously feels grateful and says so is a momentous sign of his or her development, both personal and social. It is likely that this step will be preceded by another: not feeling grateful but realizing that "gratitude," in the circumstances, is "called for," and supplying the correct demonstrations. Feeling grateful is in fact a further stage; being polite, although cerebral, complicated, and "proper," actually occupies a more primitive level than that of true gratitude. Once children have experienced real gratitude, they no longer need to be prompted (or at least not often) to feel that they owe something in return to people who have been kind to them. This "unnatural," entirely taught attainment, the ability to feel indebted-because-grateful, has often been attacked by those who believe that it is forced on people by society and the social system: it is debunked as an imposition, a compulsion, a cunning social manoeuvre that is covered over and flattered by a pretense named "gratitude." But it is a mistake always to suspect mere benightedness in people who say they feel sincerely grateful and who insist that they give back freely.

For there is a distinction between gratitude and contractual indebtedness, and the difference between them lies precisely in areas of feeling and of freedom. To begin with, gratitude involves no prescribed contract, to be strictly fulfilled by a certain date, appropriately under pain of legal sanction. With a contract, everything is agreed in advance. This is impossible with gratitude, where the future remains undetermined. When someone owes a contractual debt, he need feel no desire to be either generous or especially kindly disposed towards the person to whom he is indebted. Indeed, until he has paid up, he is likely to want to avoid his creditor. Someone grateful, on the other hand, wants to continue the relationship initiated by the giver of a favour, and seeks ways of helping her in some manner, undefined and freely chosen, on some future occasion still to be discovered. There is a creative element in gratitude, as there is in giving, which is excluded by contracts and debts.

A promise, like a contract, must be fulfilled. A sincerely grateful response, on the other hand, like the part of a gift that is not purely conventional, is freely given; as an emotion, it is spontaneously felt. An ancient and widely told folktale, "The Grateful Dead," plays with the difference between contract and gratitude. The story has many variants,¹⁹ but in essence it goes like this: A man finds a corpse lying beside the road unburied, and despite great cost to himself manages to bury it. The ghost of the dead man appears to him, thanks him profusely, and promises to help him make his fortune, on condition that he, the Grateful Dead, will get half of everything gained. The man agrees. After many adventures together, the man finds what he really wants in life: a beautiful woman whom he wants to marry. But when the hero, with the help of his sidekick, has met and obtained the consent of his beloved, the Grateful Dead demands the fulfillment of the bargain: the man must now divide his wife in two. He is horrified, but realizes that a promise is a promise. He draws his sword and is about to cut the sleeping woman in half, when the ghost stops him, says he merely wanted to test the man's constancy, and disappears.

Gratitude, unlike contractual obligation, is freely given and so escapes from necessity. It transcends Fate. The story says that "promises must be kept"; circumstances offer no extenuation. Fate cares nothing for how well-meaning someone is when he makes a decision that will later prove to have been disastrous. It actually thrives on such fiendish traps—and they can certainly inspire wonderful stories. A contract is a contract and "half" means "half": cut the woman in half, then!²⁰ In the end—at least in this version—the Grateful Dead is only a tease. He admires the hero's decision to do his duty despite his feelings. We might consider the ghost to have been truly grateful because he lets the hero off his contract even though, given the story's deference to precision, he need not have done so.