It is often noted that young people (through college years) are deficient in empathy and in expressing gratitude. Perhaps that’s not surprising. To be young is to receive support and to anticipate an expanding future without already having the maturity to appreciate the personal and social factors that foster your advancement.
This is not to conclude that older people are automatically better at expressing appreciation and at affirming those who enhance their lives. Indeed, in his appropriately titled book, “Happier,” Tal Ben-Shahir argues that most people can do better at empathy and gratitude. He advises that there are ways of teaching those values regardless of age.
“Most people fall short of their happiness potential,” Ben-Shahir concludes. A key reason for that is a lack of attentiveness to cultivating close, caring relationships. In his book and his past courses at Harvard, he urged students (and others) to write “gratitude letters.”
These would be more than “thank you notes.” Rather, they should be a “thoughtful examination of the meaning and pleasure that you derive from the relationship … particular experiences and shared dreams and whatever else in the relationship is a source of joy.”
An added pleasure these days is that most people — especially millennials and Gen Z youth — seldom receive any mail at all via the postal system (letters become rare — and special). Studies show, according to Ben-Shahir, that epistolary gratitude “often has profound effects on the writer and the receiver — and on the relationship.”
When I see my pal Hillel at libraries we often chat about his former tax client Kitty Kallen. We both were enthralled by her early 1950s song “Little Things Mean a Lot.” How much daily attentiveness do most of us have for appreciation of others and of our own situations? One does not need to think of major events, accomplishments, or relationships to feel gratitude. Delays in offering appreciations can also be addressed.
In his autobiographical essay, “Godfather” author Mario Puzo describes how he came slowly to celebrate his immigrant parents after feeling embarrassed by them until he was in his 30s. Like many immigrants, his mother and father did not learn English. Their goal was to live with more economic security in the United States, not to become American. When their American-born son Mario told his mother he wanted to become a writer. His mother’s response in Italian was “don’t be crazy; just be thankful that you are alive.”
After leaving the ghetto of Hell’s Kitchen, Puzo did become a writer. As he looked back on his family history, he developed great appreciation and respect for his parents. He recognized what courage it took to leave their Italian homeland, to traverse 3,000 miles of ocean, and to work extra hard to improve their lives in a culture that was strange to them.
With retrospective empathy and understanding, Puzo celebrated his parents as “illiterate Colombos” and concluded that they were heroes. Their sacrifices gave him a chance to “choose a dream” of his own.
Social psychological studies reveal that deep relationships are indicated when folks talk together about their past and find mostly affirmatives in what they did and what they shared. For the Kitty Kallen song, that is an ongoing affirmation process.
But “little things mean a lot” when they have greater vitality as we foster more mindfulness of ways our lives are enhanced. How about appreciating the sunshine of a new morning, or an occasional shower, which can refresh your garden and flowers? How about gratitude for good health, for enjoyable food, for opportunities to keep learning and expanding your mind and awareness?
Of course, friendships and family are central to everyone’s life. Lord Byron wrote: “All who would win joy must share it; happiness was born a twin.”
Those of us who are elders can help foster gratitude and empathy among the young. In our later years, we can appreciate the gift of time. That may seem like a weird thing to be grateful for when, given our age, we have less time than many left on Earth. However, we often have more time in each day than do many of our children and grandchildren.
We elders are best positioned to model gratitude for the young — expressing appreciation for decency, for help, for Long Island’s great schools and libraries, and for the civic virtue of others — young and old.
