The Problem With Gratitude

As Thanksgiving Day approaches in the US, my social media feed offers a cornucopia of memes and messages about the importance of giving thanks all year round. 

While the holiday itself is extremely problematic, it’s hard to find fault with practicing gratitude. Studies suggest that meditating on a few things we're grateful for each day can help increase optimism and self-esteem. 

Celebrating a bountiful harvest reminds us what is possible with hard work and long-term planning. We cultivate better relationships when we acknowledge all that our co-workers, friends, and loved ones do for us and return the favor.

If we pinpoint the good things in our lives, however small, we're less likely to fall into despair or catastrophic thinking. By focusing on the positive, we're better equipped to cope with the occasional negative.

But what happens when gratitude ceases to be a means of healing and growth and becomes a tool of oppression? What if the people who encourage us to count our blessings have ulterior motives?

As a disabled person and a survivor of abuse, my experience of gratitude is tangled with feelings of guilt and shame. 

The people who told me to be grateful for what I had were usually the ones who denied me what I needed. In this context, "focus on the positive" meant "stop complaining or I'll give you something worse to complain about." 

It's difficult to be grateful when our survival is threatened. It's even more difficult not to feel guilty when our most basic necessities are treated as an impossible burden. 

When I tried to advocate for myself, I was labeled selfish, entitled, high maintenance, and just too much to handle. Requests for reasonable accommodation brought workplace hostility and jealousy of my "special treatment." 

Later, when I was unable to work and dependent on family and government assistance, I was reminded frequently that "beggars can't be choosers." The message was clear: be content with your lot in life because it's more than you deserve and can be taken away at any time.

The rhetoric of gratitude depends on the belief that some people will always be more fortunate than others. We're thankful we have food, water, clothing, shelter, medicine, education, safety, and companionship because so many people don't. 

But basic human rights shouldn't be left up to fortune or chance, and access to what we need shouldn't be dependent on wealth, ability, or status.

If people with more than their fair share of power and wealth can convince the rest of us that the blessings we have are rare and the benefits we enjoy are scarce, we'll divide our time between being grateful for what we have and fearful that it will be taken away. 

Surrounded by those who are worse off, we will put up with a lot to avoiding suffering their fate and have little energy to spend imagining how things could be different.

This Thanksgiving, I'm going to be thankful for all that I've been given but I'll still allow myself to be angry over all that's been withheld or offered at a terrible price. 

I'm thankful for the legal protections of the ADA, but I'm angry about how often it goes unenforced. 

I'm thankful I have a roof over my head, but I'm angry it's an overpriced apartment on stolen Lenape land that my mother can only afford to rent because of benefits from my late father, who, like all shareholders, profited from others' misfortunes. 

I'm thankful for the food and clothing I've obtained from local charities, but I'm angry these same organizations turn away homeless trans women and run sheltered workshops where it's legal to pay disabled workers less than minimum wage. 

I'm thankful for Medicaid, the only way I could afford life-sustaining medication, but I'm angry for all of us who live in fear of our benefits being cut or our care denied because doctors believe a disabled person's quality of life isn't worth sustaining. 

I'm thankful I'm still ambulant most of the time, but I'm angry at a society that treats something as arbitrary as walking as a requirement for full access and paints every wheelchair user as a tragedy.  

Most of all, I'm grateful for the disabled activists who came before me, those who didn't stop at gratitude or settle for what little they were given. Because of them, my life is better, and I refuse to accept that life can't be better for everyone.