Dave Brisbin 11.30.25
Gratitude and thankfulness are not the same.
I see thankfulness as a positive reaction to a specific gift or circumstance, and though gratitude begins there, it journeys on to a non-specific attitude, a view of life that is all-inclusive, sees everything around us as a gift we could never give ourselves. Once we’re aware that life is the free reception of what we could never give ourselves or repay, that repayment is not even required, any sense of entitlement vanishes.
Jesus said the highest form of love is loving the enemy: loving—identifying with—someone who had not earned the right to that gift. And the flip side: the highest form of gratitude is being thankful for something we believe we have already earned. We can’t know love until we know gratitude, the opposite of entitlement, the ability to see everything as a gift no matter how hard we work.
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Gratitude is an umbrella term, covers and includes all positive emotions, excludes the rest. You can’t be grateful and depressed at the same time. Or angry, anxious, envious, entitled, victimized. Literally impossible. So what does gratitude feel like? Like enough. No more or less than just enough. Enoughness is the feeling we call gratitude, which feels like happiness, fulfilment, meaning, purpose.
We can’t create gratitude. It’s what happens when we begin to see everything in our moments as gifts we could never give ourselves—let go of the complexity, calculations, judgment upon which our minds insist. Instead of scarcity, see the abundance of each moment as enough.
