Giving Thanks When the World is Being a Jerk
Gratitude, shared humanity, and the radical act of letting people be.
On a sunny fall Saturday, Hocking Hills is not exactly a hike. It's more like standing in line for the newest Star Wars sequel, only with more scarves and fleece.
The trail to Old Man's Cave fills up with families, college kids, retirees with trekking poles, and at least one guy in flip-flops who clearly did not read the brochure. The stone steps narrow, everyone bunches up, and progress happens in shuffles. (The paths less taken are quieter, but some of them come with the option of rappelling off a cliff. Hence, less taken.)
Somewhere on the stairs down into the gorge, the line stalled. Up ahead, an older woman had stopped on a slick step, gripping the rail, clearly unsure about the next one.
Behind her stood a young man in a backwards ball cap and earbuds, with the general air of someone who had places to be. I braced myself for a sigh, or at least an eye roll.
Instead, he pulled out an earbud, stepped down beside her, and offered his arm. "Take your time," he said. "The rocks aren't going anywhere."
She took it. Step by step, he walked her down to the flat part of the trail, then nodded and went on his way. The whole line waited. Nobody complained. A few of us may have gotten a little misty, though we blamed the waterfall.
He didn't ask where she was from, what she believed, or whether she'd earned his help. She was a fellow human on a slippery step. That was enough.
I thought about the two of them for the rest of the hike. Not about the view. Not about whether we'd packed enough water (we had not). About them.
The Mean Stuff Gets a Megaphone
It's not hard to feel like the world has gotten meaner. Turn on the news, scroll for five minutes, or read the comments section under a video of a golden retriever, and you'll find someone furious about something.
Cruelty is loud. Kindness tends to be quiet. And our brains are not exactly neutral referees.
We come equipped with what psychologists call a negativity bias. Bad experiences, bad news, and bad behavior grab our attention faster and stick around longer than the good stuff. There's a reason for this. Our ancestors who obsessed over the rustle in the bushes lived to pass on their genes. The ones who stopped to admire the sunset got eaten.
We are, all of us, descended from worriers.
Which explains a great deal about Thanksgiving dinner.
So the mean stuff gets a megaphone and a front-row seat, while the good stuff waits patiently at the back of the line, offering someone its arm. It's still there. We just have to turn around and look.
Gratitude Without the Gold-Embossed Journal
Let me be clear about something. I am not going to tell you to buy a linen-bound gratitude journal with a ribbon marker and write down three blessings every morning before your green smoothie.
Not because it doesn't help. The research says it can. But somewhere along the way, gratitude got adopted by the #blessed crowd and turned into a performance. Smile harder. Think positive. Good vibes only.
Frankly, "good vibes only" makes me want to throw something.
Real gratitude isn't pretending everything is fine. It's noticing what's good while fully aware of what isn't. Both things can be true at the same time. The world can be cruel, and a stranger can still stop on a crowded trail to help someone down the steps.
I see this every week in my office. People carrying grief, illness, loss, and fear, who still light up talking about a grandchild's laugh or the neighbor who shoveled their driveway without being asked. Their gratitude doesn't erase the hard stuff. It sits beside it at the table, like a relative you didn't exactly invite but are secretly glad showed up.
In a world that seems determined to be a jerk, noticing the good anyway might be one of the most quietly defiant things a person can do.
Same Stuff, Different Recipes
At the end of most yoga classes, the teacher and students bow to each other and say namaste. My favorite definition of namaste is often attributed to Ram Dass, and it goes something like this: the light in me honors the light in you, and when you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, we are one.
You and I are made of the same stuff.
The same fears. The same need to be loved and to belong. The same hope that someone will save us the last piece of pie. Self-compassion researchers have a name for this: common humanity. It's the recognition that suffering, struggle, and imperfection aren't personal failings. They're part of the deal for every one of us who signed up for a body and a nervous system.
And here's the part I love. Underneath all that sameness, we are wonderfully, stubbornly different.
We look different. We pray differently, or not at all. We love different people, in different ways. We celebrate different holidays with different foods, but the longing is the same: to be fed, to belong, and to have our people around us.
Thank goodness. A world where everyone looked, believed, loved, and cooked exactly like me would be unbearably dull. A few years ago, we skipped the traditional Thanksgiving dinner (I've never been much of a turkey fan). Instead, we made and bought a feast of appetizers including: sushi, shrimp with spicy cocktail sauce, fruit, veggie platters, spinach dip with dark bread, a tray of hanky pankies, and several other delectable treats. If you've never had a hanky panky, they're little squares of party bread topped with sautéed ground beef and melted cheese, then baked until dangerous.
There was something for every guest and every preference. Nobody had to eat what they didn't like, and nobody had to defend what they did. The hanky pankies disappeared in about four minutes, which tells you something about shared humanity, too.
The Radical Act of Letting People Be
This one is harder than it sounds, especially for someone in my line of work. Therapists are professional noticers. We notice things for a living. Turning that off at the dinner table takes real effort, and I don't always succeed.
But letting people be is one of the kindest gifts we can give each other, and one of the most underrated.
Letting people be doesn't mean you agree with everything they do. It doesn't mean you stop having opinions (I will never stop having opinions). It means you stop needing to fix, convert, correct, or improve everyone who crosses your path. It means you let your cousin's new partner be. You let the kid with the blue hair be. You let the neighbor who has Christmas lights up on November 1st be, even though, come on.
The young man on the trail didn't interview that woman before he offered his arm. He didn't need her life story. He simply decided that whoever she was, she deserved a steady hand.
Imagine if we all ran our lives that way. Not perfectly. Just a little more often.
And Then There's Uncle Marty
Every family has one. Maybe yours goes by a different name, but you know him. He arrives with gray, limp string beans under a blanket of cream of chicken soup and canned fried onions. Then he waits. The moment dinner is served, out come his opinions on politics and religion, sprayed across the table like Silly String until every one of your guests is covered. Half the table stare at their plates while the other half reach for the wine.
So what do we do with Marty?
First, a clarification. Letting people be does not mean letting people be cruel. If Marty aims his opinions at someone sitting at that table, your niece, your neighbor's kid, the new partner who's already nervous, it's okay to speak up. Calmly, briefly, and without turning the gravy boat into a weapon. "Not at this table, Marty" is a complete sentence.
But most of the time, Marty isn't attacking anyone. He's just being Marty. And here's the thing I tell clients every November: you are not going to change Uncle Marty's mind between the turkey and the pumpkin pie. Decades of therapy haven't changed some people's minds. One dinner won't either.
You don't have to win. You don't even have to play.
A few things that help:
Notice your body before your mouth gets involved. Clenched jaw, shoulders creeping up toward your ears, a sudden urge to grip your fork like a dagger. That's your nervous system gearing up for battle. Take a breath before you decide whether this is a hill worth dying on. (It usually isn't. It's a hill covered in gravy.)
If you feel courageous, get curious instead of furious. "Huh. What makes you say that?" buys you time, and sometimes the answer reveals the worry or fear sitting underneath the opinion. Most bluster is fear wearing a loud sweater. Personally, I wouldn't have that conversation on Thanksgiving.
Change the subject, shamelessly. Ask him about his knee replacement. His fantasy football team. The time he got lost driving to Cleveland in 1987. Marty loves talking about Marty.
Take a strategic exit. Refill the water glasses. Check on the pie. Volunteer for dishes. Nobody has ever been dragged into a political debate while elbow-deep in a roasting pan.
Remember that he's a person too. Marty has fears, losses, and a nervous system of his own. That doesn't make him right. It just makes him human, like the rest of us at the table.
You can love Marty and still think he's wrong. Most of us call that family.
So, What Am I Thankful For?
This year, I'm thankful for the people who quietly keep the world from falling apart while the loud people get all the attention.
The nurse who stays twenty minutes past her shift. The bus monitor who knows every kid's name. The neighbor who brings your trash cans up from the curb and never mentions it. The stranger who holds the door, lets you merge, or tells you there's toilet paper stuck to your shoe. (Bless you, whoever you were.)
Closer to home, I'm thankful for Tony: his kindness, his humor, and his partnership with me over the years. I'm thankful for my family and my friends. And I'm thankful for our kitty kiddies, who are always available to love us unconditionally. Or maybe they're just hungry. It doesn't matter. We are a bonded little family.
I'm thankful that we are all so different, and that underneath it, we are not different at all.
And I'm thankful for the reminder, delivered on a crowded staircase in the woods, that kindness doesn't need a reason. It doesn't check credentials. It just shows up, holding the door.
So this Thanksgiving, when the news is loud and the world feels mean, try turning around. Look for the quiet stuff. Say thank you out loud, and be specific about it. Offer somebody your arm.
And if someone cuts in front of you on the stairs at Old Man's Cave?
Let them be. The rocks aren't going anywhere.
For Those Who Are Curious: The Nerdy Stuff
Why does the bad stuff stick? Negativity bias is well documented. Across many areas of life, negative events tend to have a stronger and longer-lasting impact on attention, memory, and mood than positive events of similar size. It made evolutionary sense. It is less helpful when you're doomscrolling at 11 p.m.
What does gratitude actually do? In studies where people regularly noted things they were grateful for, participants reported greater well-being and a more positive outlook than people who listed hassles or neutral events. Gratitude is also linked with stronger relationships. Noticing and expressing appreciation seems to help us find, remind ourselves of, and bond with the people who matter to us.
Why does it widen our view? Positive emotions like gratitude may broaden our attention and thinking, making us more open, creative, and flexible, and over time help build social and psychological resources we can draw on when life gets hard.
What is common humanity? In self-compassion research, common humanity is the recognition that suffering and imperfection are shared parts of the human experience, rather than something that happens only to us. Seeing our struggles as part of a larger human story tends to make us feel less isolated and more connected.
A little science. A little perspective. And perhaps a little more patience on the trail.
References & Further Reading
Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5(4), 323–370.
Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377–389.
Algoe, S. B. (2012). Find, remind, and bind: The functions of gratitude in everyday relationships. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6(6), 455–469.
Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218–226.
Wood, A. M., Froh, J. J., & Geraghty, A. W. A. (2010). Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical integration. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(7), 890–905.
Neff, K. D. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2(2), 85–101.
