A Tricycle magazine article caught my eye today. The article, “The Gift of Gratitude,” is by Ajahn Sumedho, a Buddhist monk. He has this to say about the connection between gratitude and joy:

A life without gratitude is a joyless life. If life is just a continuous complaint about the injustices and unfairness we have received and we don’t remember anything good ever done to us, we fall into depression – not an uncommon problem these days. It is impossible to imagine ever being happy again: we think this misery is forever.

In Sumedho’s case, his turbulent relationship with a distant father made him feel ungrateful and distant toward his parents and others. These feelings, and how to handle them, became a trap for him:

We know in our mind that we should be able to forgive our enemies and love our parents, but in the heart we feel “I can never forgive them for what they’ve done.” So then we either feel anger and resentment, or we begin to rationalize: “Because my parents were so bad, so unloving, so unkind, they made me suffer so much that I can’t forgive or forget.” Or: “There’s something wrong with me. I’m a terrible person because I can’t forgive.” When this happens, I’ve found it helpful to have metta [gentle friendliness or kindness] for my own feelings. If we feel that our parents were unkind and unloving, we can have metta toward the feeling we have in our hearts; without judgment, we can see that this is how it feels, and to accept that feeling with patience.

The article closes with some thoughts on gratitude and relationships from Sumedho’s Thai teacher, Ajahn Chah:

Sometimes when teachings are given on birth, aging, illness, and death, people aren’t pleased. Especially in the West, when you talk about this, people get up and walk away. They don’t want to get old. So when people become old, they are abandoned.

In the Western countries this seems to be the custom, to discard the old folks so the youngsters can get on with their lives. Of course the youngsters will get old too, and then they will be discarded in their turn. When we are young, we should look at and reflect on old people. This is karma, isn’t it? I tried to explain this to the Westerners, that if you discard people, you will also be discarded. When we are old, we should think about young people. They are connected, like links in a chain.