"Be More Grateful"

I don't know how this email-from-Google-RSS will work in Blogger, but here goes.

The other day I was reading an advice column by Cary Tennis, in which a woman expressed her guilt about stealing something. His reply included a suggestion that she examine her life for feelings of deprivation (perhaps her past). I thought that his linking of stealing to feelings of deprivation was exactly right. 

Then a day or so later I was thinking about r@pe, a topic that comes up frequently in my line of work, (not to mention just in being in my gender group). And I thought of r@pe as a form of stealing, and then I recalled the deprivation link. At first thought that sounded terrible to me. "Those r@pists, they're just deprived"? But then, deprived of what? 

And then I considered that only a sense of (undue) entitlement can create a sense of deprivation about another human being. Why are most serial ki11ers white males? Sense of thwarted entitlement, as the theory goes. So, yeah, if we as a society go by the understanding that men "deserve" women (or even a woman), of course we're creating an atmosphere conducive to r@pe, because we're creating a sense of deprivation.

But from this thought came something bigger. It occurred to me that no sense of deprivation can occur unless there is a sense of entitlement. Even in areas of life where it seems that there "should" be some entitlement, such as health and safety and so forth, let alone areas like material belongings. And if we feel entitlement, then we are unlikely to feel gratitude, because we take whatever-it-is for granted.

So I guess it's all related to itself in a convoluted way that as I talk about it is beginning to sound Buddhist to me (in my limited understanding).

 

 

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Want To Be Happier? Be More Grateful

via ScienceDaily: Latest Science News on 11/24/08

Want to quickly improve your happiness and satisfaction with life? Then the pen may be a mighty weapon. Researchers recruited students from six courses to explore the effects of writing letters of gratitude to people who had positively impacted the students' lives. Over the course of a six-week period, students wrote one letter every two weeks with the simple ground rules that it had to be positively expressive, required some insight and reflection, were nontrivial and contained a high level of appreciation or gratitude. "I saw their happiness increase after each letter, meaning the more they wrote, the better they felt," says the lead researcher.