I have been asked, as part of a team-building process, to share with my colleagues what I am grateful for. I need to come up with one personal gratitude and one related to work. I've got nothing.
It is not that I am always unhappy, nor that I am not appreciative of the little things people do for me on a daily basis. When I ask people at work for assistance on a project, they usually show up and assist. (Yes, it’s usually something in their job descriptions, but still, they don’t have to be responsive.) Colleagues at other institutions are usually willing to provide advice or share their experiences, and I appreciate that. At home, my family is nice to me. I like having them around. I’m home with them, working remotely, so it’s important that we be nice to each other. I have a couple of friends who do what friends do.
But I am generally not “grateful” in any cosmic sense. I’m more of a stoic, I think: I take on each challenge as it comes. I try not to be swayed by the tiny little successes and failures that I encounter each day. I don’t think that means I lack emotion—I just absorb everything, good and bad, into my overall sense of the world. So the peaks and valleys of day-to-day life are going to happen, and they are smoothed out in the bigger picture. Good things aren’t granted to me, nor are the bad things a divine punishment, though sometimes they are my fault and I should have seen them coming. Ultimately, they probably strike some sort of balance. Maybe my balance has more highs than others have. I am doing okay, generally. I am still here. But, you know, we’re all going to die.
I am an atheist, and I am not in the habit of giving thanks to a higher power for all of my blessings, any more than I would curse a higher power for all of my burdens. I’ve also never been a participant in a 12-step program, in which people are pressed to think about the little triumphs of each day. (I have nothing against religion or 12-step recovery programs. They both have value to their adherents. I’m not a militant atheist—religion just doesn’t do anything for me.) I also am aware that there is research promoting expressions of gratitude in the workplace, as the key to increased job satisfaction, creativity, and team cohesiveness. Being asked to share my gratitudes, though, feels like an empty gesture, as though doing it will somehow make me appreciate my world and my colleagues more. I am not sure that it will. I already appreciate them enough, as much as they deserve. Also, I don’t necessarily want to know their personal stuff, and I don’t want them to know mine. I have made friends at work, but it is my choice to do that. Coming up with things to be grateful for edges awfully close to the idea that my organization should be one big happy paternalistic family, in which we share our emotional lives with each other like families do. Is it no longer okay to keep our personal and professional lives separate, despite the fact that everyone can hear my dog barking during video meetings now?
Postscript: I ran these ideas past my wife and my son, and they both tell me that I am full of crap. So feel free to take my side.
