1/🧵Gratitude is Pain’s big brother
▪️Prof Greg teaches me to accept life on life’s terms
▪️ICU pts teach me how to traverse pain
▪️Gratitude is their close companion
▪️Gratitude is not just a tenet of etiquette – it’s an essential quality of well-being
#UpSyndrome
Pics w perm
2/ I can’t pay gratitude w a checkbook, only from the ❤️
📍My Gratitude Ledger is in deficit because I don’t nurture #Wisdom
📍I underutilize this superpower of recovery
📍Gratitude is Greg’s antidote to victimhood
📍It helps him rise above any situation
#TheLuckyFew
3/ Gratitude can’t be reduced to verbal or written acknowledgment of a gift 🎁
Greg has a deep sense of awareness of his interdependency on others, you & me, his sisters & brothers.
He’s gracious in heartfelt appreciation despite living w great disabilities.
#FindYourTribe
4/ I’m not self-sufficient
✔️ This fact is encoded in nature itself
✔️I came into existence completely & totally helpless & unaware of who I was
✔️Everything immediately following birth was done for me, except natural body functions & even these were tended to by others!
5/ Even as a child, I’d already accumulated innumerable gifts for which to be thankful & I plunged “into the red” in terms of gratefulness.
Somehow Greg never dipped into a well of self-pity
His heart remained where I want mine - constantly accepting what IS…
#DownSyndrome
6/ Everything given to me has come at some sacrifice from someone else.
Sometimes these sacrifices were done voluntarily & joyfully, sometimes they were done begrudgingly.
Either way, sacrifices were made, and I do not stand alone on an island…
gratitude is in order…
7/ It is a difficult truth that in some cases I owe a debt of gratitude to people who have not been very virtuous themselves.
A child of a bad parent may have many legitimate complaints about that parent…
Yet immense gain is mine of I change my mindset.
8/One of the ways I get a sense of the importance of gratitude is by experiencing #ingratitude from others.
The feeling of being used is painful when I’ve given to others, or worse, when they deny the reality of the gift itself as if I had no role to play in their receiving it.
9/ Pain is greater when my gift was out of genuine love & not merely out of a sense of duty or pity.
Until I reach a greater state of spiritual enlightenment, the experience of ingratitude from others still leaves me feeling angry, betrayed & deeply hurt.
This is my error.
10/ Let’s go deeper on this topic…
Does Ingratitude diminish personhood❓
🔹I believe it’s in giving that I receive
🔹When my gift is not acknowledged, does it diminish me?
🔹Am I bereft because I gave at a cost?
11/ When ingratitude is present, the reciprocity that connects giver & recipient is absent.
There’s a lack of wholeness in the relationship that I had anticipated.
Expectations control my thinking 💥
Good news: I can drop expectations in favor of acceptance.
12/ A true gift is of course isn’t given with strings attached.
It’s not a fee paid for a service the giver expects to be rendered.
Gratitude is not the performance required after a purchased service.
13/ Those dynamics are appropriate to contractual agreements - not personal relationships.
Gratitude presupposes a genuine freedom on the part of both giver & recipient.
The giver is not compelled to give, the recipient is not coerced to receive.
14/ Gratitude is the spontaneous reaction of appreciation in response to a gift, no matter how small.
When true giving is met with genuine gratitude, both giver & recipient grow in goodness.
But should my growth or joy in giving be diminished by a recipient’s anemic response?
15/ As a father, I have allowed myself to take it personally when what I gave was discarded or unwanted.
This is because I manufactured expectations that were unrealized.
Again, my problem…not theirs.
16/ As a recipient of #Grace, my own ingratitude imprisons me
☑️In contrast, gratitude transforms me as a recipient
☑️Gratitude takes the focus off me & orients me to the generosity of the Giver
☑️Thankfulness liberates me & predisposes me to receive greater spiritual gifts
17/ Wherever you are, whatever your station, how grateful are you?
How often do I accept the gift but fail to give thanks to the giver?
How often do I cherry pick the gifts for which to be grateful?
#Greg is very consistent.
My patients are a close second in thankfulness.
18/ Ultimately I want to detach from what others say & do.
Except to draw on those experience & learn myself.
To become more like Greg, accepting of my place in this 🌎, I must SIMPLIFY my thinking.
Strip myself down & become unencumbered by pride.
#ChromosomallyEnhanced
19/fin
There is Beauty in Simplicity 🧵👇
This is how Greg lives
Daily, I watch him take small events & display immense thankfulness
He is transformed
Am I being transformed?
Will I allow myself to be radically improved by acceptance & nurture gratefulness?
#DesignerGenes
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