Mike Parker: Why so little gratitude?
Years ago, I heard the story of a little boy who received an orange from a kindly storekeeper. The tyke’s mother looked at him and said:
“What do you say?”
The little fellow looked up at the shopkeeper and lifted the orange.
“Peel it.”
Our Daily Bread, my favorite devotional booklet, recounted this story in Feb. 20, 1994. Terry Masango shared the story in her Nov. 22, 2016, online article titled “7 Reasons Why People Are Ungrateful”:
A ministerial student in Evanston, Illinois, was part of a life-saving squad. In 1860, a ship went aground on the shore of Lake Michigan near Evanston. This student, Edward Spencer, waded again and again into the frigid waters to rescue 17 passengers. In the process of saving others, he damaged his health permanently. Some years later at his funeral, one speaker noted that not one of the people he rescued ever thanked him.
I guess the story shows that lack of gratitude is nothing new. Still, I doubt many people realize how an ungrateful attitude can eat away at a person’s soul.
Think about this question: What is the opposite of “thanksgiving”? Words that spring to my mind are greed, selfishness, whining, grumbling, complaining, indifference, and discontent. So why are people so reluctant to express gratitude and so ready to demonstrate their ingratitude?
Perhaps the first reason is ignorance. People are just not being taught to show and to express appreciation. When I was growing up back in the dark ages, my parents made a point of teaching me to express gratitude. Had I been the little boy in the orange story, when Mom said, “What do you say?” I would have blushed and said, “Thank you.” I also would have expected a lecture on the evil of ingratitude once we were on the way home.
At least two generations of children generally were not instructed in the fine art of expressing thanks. Appreciation is just one of the social graces so many children seem to lack today.
Another reason people fail to express thanks is because of the “entitlement” mentality. Why should we be thankful for things we are entitled to receive? I would like to know the source of this sense of entitlement.
Perhaps we have listened to too many commercials that breed “entitlement.” I remember an old MacDonald commercial that said: “You deserve a break today, / so get up and get away / to MacDonald’s.” Lesson: for some reason, we deserve a break. Law firms constantly air advertisements promoting the idea that the injured party is entitled to compensation that they may miss without a lawyer. At Burger King, the motto is “You rule!”
I do not cite these examples because I have a problem with law firms or fast food. I use them as a just few examples of how business has learned to play into the entitlement mentality.
Perhaps another reason people fail to show gratitude is because of procrastination. When someone does them a kindness, meets a need, or just gives a gift, then the recipient intends to express gratitude – but then put off expressing thanks. More often than not, the person forgets about expressing appreciation at all.
Expressing gratitude has many benefits. According to a Harvard University study titled “Giving thanks can make you happier,” Dr. Robert A. Emmons of the University of California, Davis, and Dr. Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami, both psychologists, have done much of the research on gratitude. In one study, they asked all participants to write a few sentences each week, focusing on particular topics. One group was to write about things they were grateful for that occurred during the week. A second group spent their time chronicling daily irritations and displeasures. A third group wrote about events that affected them, both positive and negative.
To no one’s surprise, those who wrote on gratitude felt more optimistic and held a more hopeful attitude about their lives. This group also exercised more and had fewer visits to doctors than those who focused on their sources of irritation.
Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, conducted a test of 411 people. First, they wrote about their earliest childhood memories. These responses were used as an experimental control. Then they wrote a letter of gratitude to someone they had never properly thanked for an act of kindness. Participants in this study immediately displayed a significant increase in their happiness scores – and the impact lasted for a month or more.
Studies have also found that couples who express appreciation to each other grow closer and have a happier relationship. Employees who receive expressions of thanks for their performance work even harder. The impacts upon those who express gratitude are most profound in those who have developed emotional maturity.
Being a truly grateful person is a measure of maturity, while ingratitude is a sign of stunted emotional growth.
We all need to grow up – and some of us need to grow up a great deal.
“Peel it” is never the correct response to someone who gives us an orange.
Mike Parker is a columnist for the Neuse News. You can reach him at mparker16@gmail.com.
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