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Yes this is so true! I feel gratitude everyday for many things in my life.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katzpur
That's something that I seem to think about every year when Thanksgiving comes around. Who is it atheists are grateful to on Thanksgiving? (Not trying to provoke a fight here... just wondering.)
I am thankful on Thanksgiving that I have unconditioned myself and I don't have to participate in a tradition based on a myth.
I have a "pass it on" attitude to gratitude and thankfulness. In that when ever I benefit from the actions or will of another human - I try to seek out and pass it on to another person who requires it too. So any good deed committed against my person - I commit onwards to the next.
And when people thank me for anything I do or say - I try to sell that philosophy to them. Especially if rather than thank me they use a phrase like "How can I thank you enough" or "How can I ever repay this kindness" - I just tell them "the only and best way to do so is to actively seek out someone who is in the same or similar need as you were - and seek to perform the same or similar good deed for them as I did for you."
The joy of any good deed for me is the idea it might cascade onwards in some small way.
I think you've got to start by feeling gratitude. This is something a lot of people seem to be unable to do. They seem to think that they are entitled to everything good that they have. They might feel lucky to have had so many fortunate breaks, but I don't think that you can truly feel gratitude unless that gratitude is directed at whoever it was who gave you what you have.
That's something that I seem to think about every year when Thanksgiving comes around. Who is it atheists are grateful to on Thanksgiving? (Not trying to provoke a fight here... just wondering.)
I agree, I don't feel thankful or grateful in the abstract, those are specific, personal emotions. I feel thankful to a person, grateful to someone for a specific thing, I don't feel thankful to capitalism, or grateful to evolution.
So for me, Thanksgiving is more about appreciation, recognizing the good things that I have, taking time to value the relationships I have, and reflecting on those things. Essentially, I find it the same or similar emotion, only a bit more abstracted. I just don't have a specific entity that I am attaching those feeling of appreciation to, its more a time of reflection and of really holding those things in mind, savoring the relationships, circumstances, and human effort that has gone into making my life what it is.
About thirty years ago, I was working at a job I absolutely hated. I mean I hated it in the worst imaginable way. My boss was a complete a-hole, I was being underutilized and I felt trapped. It was a small office and I was usually the first one in each morning. One morning I was there before anybody else showed up and was feeling so sorry for myself. Then the phone rang. It was my mother. She was calling to tell me that she'd had to call an ambulance to the house in the wee hours of the morning to take my father to the hospital. She'd been there most of the night and had just gotten home. They'd admitted him, and it didn't look good. There was a very good chance that he wouldn't make it. I was numb. I hung up the phone and just sat there at my desk thinking about what she'd just said. At that moment, I thought, "If I could only go back to yesterday. Yesterday, the worst thing about my life was this stupid job. True, I hate it, but how miserable it's making me can't compare to the pain I'm feeling now, knowing I may lose my dad." Well, he ended up recovering, and living another 5 years. But the experience always stuck with me.
A couple of years ago, there was a billboard up near an intersection a few blocks away from my house. It was advertising insurance. On it, it said, "You never know when the day before is the day before." In other words, you might think you have it bad today, but tomorrow, you could lose literally everything you hold dear in a split second. On February 13, I bet there were a lot of kids at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who were unhappy with their lives. The cute girl or cute guy they liked wasn't interested in them. Their math teacher had in it in for them. They couldn't afford to buy the kind of shoes or backpack the cool kids had. Their parents wouldn't let them drive the car to school, and instead they had to walk a half a mile to get there. At the end of the day on February 14, I bet there wasn't one of them who wouldn't have gone back to February 13 in an instant. Had they known what February 14 held in store, they'd have appreciated their blessings and not focused on the things they didn't have. But February 13 was "the day before" things really got bad, and they couldn't possibly have seen it coming.
I seriously remember that saying -- "You never know when the day before is the day before" -- every day of my life now. Do I still feel sorry for myself sometimes? Absolutely. I throw the most extravagant pity parties imaginable at times, but I'm working on throwing fewer of them. I try not to let my negative (poor me!) feelings control me, because I know that I am blessed so greatly that I really have nothing to complain about.
I'm grateful every day I awaken and find that I'm still capable of being upright and mobile. One way I express it is by feeding many dozens of birds and other critters 2-3 times a day, 365 days of the year. It's mutually beneficial, of course. They get to eat for free and I get to watch and often interact with them. For the last several years I've been fortunate to live on a beautiful parcel of land on the edge of wilderness. Not a day goes by that I don't look outside and feel gratitude.
To make a very long story short, we have two dogs. One of them, at age 5, is still not completely housebroken. We have been trying to solve this problem ever since we got him 14 months ago and I am at the end of my rope. Every time he pees on something (most recently, his preferred object is the leg of our dining room table), I just fall apart. I am so sick of him doing this that I can hardly stand it, but being who I am, I will never get rid of him. Instead, I'll just wallow in pity once a week over how bad I have it, while other people's dogs are so well-behaved. Recently, we put a moisture sensor right next to the leg of the table. It picks up as little as 1/32 of an inch of liquid and instantaneously emits a deafening alarm the instant it senses liquid under it. We put it up a week ago and Friederik had not had an accident indoors in 7 days -- at least not until a half hour ago. But this morning, literally a matter of two or three seconds before I posted my last post, I heard the alarm go off and rushed into the dining room to find pee covering the floor next to the leg of the table.
As I cleaned up the mess, and felt my frustration growing to the point where I could easily have started to cry, I reminded myself that you never know when the day before is the day before. If, sometime this afternoon, Friederik were to somehow get out of our yard, run into the street and get hit by a car and killed, I'm sure I would willingly resign myself to having a dog who pees in my house, rather than have him gone.
So, Katzpur, what I find interesting is that the attitude of taking stock of our real situation, and really evaluating and taking time to put thing in perspective is a fantastic example of what holidays like Thanksgiving are to me. If you notice, you wrote two very large posts about this without needing to invoke a deity or a recipient of gratitude. I don’t doubt that for you that is involved, but if you take your own words at face value, you have done an amazing job of conveying the kind of reflection, appreciation, and centering that holidays like Thanksgiving mean for me. You had a fantastic answer to your own question all along!
I know it doesn't need thanks. I also understand that gratitude is a human emotion. Humans needs to have a place to place their emotions, here gratitude. I place it on the universe.
no big deal.
its not a big deal until we start lining up properties of the universe. then these guys deny this and ram it down peoples throats and those guys ram some religion thing down my throat. Poof, a problem.
I think its time for rational, middle of the roaders to stop this war. Its ok to point out some serous flaws with religion without having to deny everything they say. Its ok to dislike over organised religion without denying every rational piece of science that is discovered.
I get accused of saying the same thing over and over. Yeah, there is a rational middle ground. LIST THE TRAITS of the system and see what gives. like QM and e=mc^2, it is valid no matter how many times I say it.
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