What Our Ancestors Knew: Living Gratefully Is at the Heart of Life

Several years back, I realized I had a problem while exiting the Garden State Parkway. I looked into my rearview mirror and my vision doubled. It was a dangerous and scary moment followed by much anxiety as I waited to see an ophthalmologist. When I saw the doctor, he observed what I could not see for myself even before examining my eye. As he spoke, he noticed I sharply tilted my head to prevent double vision and I shaved my beard at a peculiar angle. The cause was a 4th nerve palsy — nothing too serious and it only required minor surgery. Soon after, I realized that I was going about my life without knowing I had adjusted to something as significant as double vision. No one in my daily life saw my head tilt or a crooked beard happening slowly over time, but it was immediately obvious to the external observer. It’s easy to miss nuances when we’ve become accustomed to things, and it’s easy to misplace common threads over time and over generations.

When our founder Br. David Steindl-Rast became the pioneer of interfaith dialogue in 1966, his charge was to listen. He arrived at conversations as an observer seeking common ground that was previously overlooked as a result of dogmas, traditions, sacred texts, and long cultural histories. But in Buddhist temples, Jewish synagogues, Islamic mosques, Christian cathedrals, and elsewhere he distinctly recognized gratitude in all. If you have ever stood in any of these places, you know that the words spoken, songs sung, sacred teachings taught, and the divergent traditions in each are radically different. And yet, a monumental commonality existed. 

Gratitude is at the heart of living a meaningful life. 

Br. David’s observation that gratitude is the through line for every spiritual tradition is a significant contribution to all spiritual practices. In a polarized world, Br. David discovered an opportunity for unity through this universal language, and he also recognized what our ancestors across every tradition knew at its origin — that gratitude is at the heart of living a meaningful life. 

The conclusions born from these observations are extraordinary. While each tradition yields its own fruit, they all possess a core understanding that gratefulness is at the heart of the matter. That means a distinctive and common path exists for all of us in pursuit of attuning to our lives, finding our purpose, and discovering meaning. 

Karen Armstrong, the author of “A History of God,” says religion’s task is “to help us live creatively, peacefully, and even joyously with realities for which there [are] no easy explanations and problems that we cannot solve: morality, pain, grief, despair, and outrage at the injustice and cruelty of life.” How does religion do this? With gratefulness at its heart. 

Whether you are already part of a tradition or are seeking ways to tend to your spiritual life, living gratefully is a universal spiritual practice for navigating every day, moment-to-moment.  

Br. David’s observations tell us that humans have known and understood the power of gratefulness for millennia, even if they expressed it differently. What each spiritual tradition understands is that life is a gift and we have choices to make about what we do with this gift. And while gratefulness exists within those contexts as Br. David observed, it also exists outside of them. So whether you are already part of a tradition or are seeking ways to tend to your spiritual life, living gratefully is a universal spiritual practice for navigating every day, moment-to-moment.   

As a spiritual practice, living gratefully does what Karen Armstrong described as religion’s essence: it allows for the expression of joy, the courage to hope, and the creation of belonging for yourself and others, while also confronting the incurable realities of life. And in return, we find meaning in the moment and learn the importance of cherishing what is good and life-nourishing. Sadly, many religious traditions have lost sight of their task and have chosen exclusive and binary thinking rather than the hard work of tussling with the difficulties in life. But your life, with all its complexities, remains steadily available for celebrating the wisdom of our ancestors and living gratefully. 

When you become the observer of your life by living gratefully, you discover what others are missing in theirs. You will develop a richer understanding of all the common threads and respond to life differently because you recognize it as a gift even when there are no explanations. What Br. David discovered is a roadmap to living more fully. He was able to see what many had forgotten and misplaced over time, but it was always there. We must wonder what else we’ve missed or forgotten and how fully attuning to our lives might help us better see all that is waiting to be discovered in our lifetime. The spiritual practice of living gratefully reveals what was always there. 

Photo by Phil Hearing

Joe Primo, Grateful Living

Joe Primo is the CEO of Grateful Living. He is a passionate speaker and community-builder whose accomplishments made him a leading voice on resilience and adversity. Gratefulness for life, he believes, is foundational to discovering meaning and the only response that is big enough and appropriate for the plot twists, delights, surprises, and devastation we encounter along the way. A student of our founder since his studies at Yale Divinity School, Joe is committed to advancing our global movement and making the transformational practice of grateful living both accessible to all and integral to communities and places of belonging. His TED talk, “Grief is Good,” reframed the grief paradigm as a responsive resource. He is the author of “What Do We Tell the Children? Talking to Kids About Death and Dying” and numerous articles.

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