Experiencing Gratitude
“I read your speech ‘To Alma Mater With Gratitude.’ That set me thinking.” Lulu, my parrot said as he fluttered his wings. He had just landed himself on the edge of my laptop.
“My Institute gave me ‘Lifetime Achievement Award.’ It was my acceptance speech.”
“The word gratitude is so apt in that context. Do you understand the difference between gratitude and grateful?” I remembered my teacher. I always failed in answering questions like ‘explain the difference between this and that.’ Experience has taught me that something more difficult hides behind this question.
“Hmm…. Let me think….. Gratitude is a noun while Grateful is an adjective.”
“Oh, Forget grammar, dictionaries tell us that, my friend. Have you ‘discovered’ the meaning?”
“What’s that?”
“What happens to you when you ‘felt’ grateful and what happens when you were ‘filled’ with gratitude?”
“When I felt grateful, I said ‘Thank you.’”
“You got it right. Gratefulness is always expressed toward the other. It is directed at somebody else. It is thankfulness. People who survived the Bomb blasts in Mumbai felt grateful to the Lord. Last minute goal in football, last ball winning stroke of a sixer in cricket also produces the same feeling. You would have seen the winner of Wimbledon kneeling down or looking skyward and thanking the Lord.”
“Sometimes you wonder if you did it. You often conclude that it was done through you. The invisible hand of the almighty, I mean, if you are a believer.”
“And you are grateful to HIM. But gratitude is different. You are taught to be grateful……”
“….And gratitude?”
“You experience gratitude. As you said, you are ‘filled’ with it. It can’t be taught. It emerges from within. Osho says it ‘arises out of you like a fragrance.’ So there you are – alone and flowering. Like the Parijat tree. You move to a higher plane. You look back to find that waves in your life have taken you toward the shore and sometimes taken you away. Yet those experiences leave you enriched. More awakened.”
“Hmmmm….. You are getting philosophical. It will take me sometime to understand Osho’s interpretation fully. Osho’s words sound poetic. I can say that at the event when I was felicitated and given the Lifetime Achievement Award, I was overcome with emotions. I felt humbled. It will take some time for me to label the experience.”
“Don’t worry about labelling it. Just stay with it. Isn’t that good?”
Vivek S Patwardhan
Beautifully expressed the difference between ‘Grateful’ and ‘Gratitude’…. Thank you!!
Well explained !
Thank you sir for putting all these thgts together.
Gratitude,is more tough than grateful I feel. Gratitude is deeper, exists at the personaility level. Grateful is mostly behaviour related. It’s a lil more easy to be grateful at the moment. But it is interesting and a journey in itself to have gratitude and sustain it thru thick and thin.
Beautifully articulated. You are filled with gratitude as the universe has conspired to fulfill your dreams. You feel humbled and filled with gratitude for what the would has done to you.
A fascinating contextual explanation; an expression of emotion and humility.. so well conveyed!
Thanks for sharing.
Mohana
Well explained!! GREAT FULLNESS is felt towards the others or to HIM whereas GRATITUDE is to the persons/ Institution/organization who supported you to. Become the achiever.
You are GREAT and full of GRATITUDE.
Forme Gratefulness is a transient feeling which flies out of window till the next bad episode or encounter but gratitude- it signifies permanence, a sense of well being .
Forme Gratefulness is a transient feeling which flies out of window till the next bad episode or encounter but gratitude- it signifies permanence, a sense of well being.
Gratefulness is a transient feeling which flies out of window till the next bad episode or encounter but gratitude- it signifies permanence, a sense of well being achieved through experience and wisdom.
Nice comparison between grateful and gratitude. When one feels gratitude , he would express the gratitude to the Lord. eg when haves feel gratitude for the abundance given , they are grateful to The Lord for the same.
Thanks for sharing