Let me tell you about what I ate for Thanksgiving. My wife is a wonderful baker and cook, and she did something different this year. She made regular cornbread dressing, but baked it as muffins. She sliced the dressing muffins in half as a base. A layer of homemade cranberry sauce went on. And then on that went smoked barbeque turkey from my favorite barbeque restaurant in Houston. She put poached eggs on top of that, and then covered it in a sage hollandaise. Thanksgiving Eggs Benedict for a Thanksgiving brunch. (The benedicts were so good that nobody even noticed she forgot the pumpkin pancakes she had promised.) It was a very traditional Thanksgiving meal, only prepared in a different way. Everyone I told about the benedicts said something like “that sounds so good! Why didn’t I think of that!?!?”
Gratitude is on my mind lately. Because of Thanksgiving, of course. And also the wave of articles I’ve seen lately about gratitude being essential for good mental health. Like this one. And this one. And this one. I work with stressed-out high school students for a living, so mental health is always on my mind.
Gratitude is also the topic of the newest essay prompt on the Common Application, and I’ve been thinking of ways to advise people who are interested in writing about it.
Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?
I actually haven’t seen any of the students I work with attempt that essay yet. It seems to be a strangely difficult one to write. I suspect one reason students pass it up is because of the idea that your essay needs to stand out. It needs to be unique and individual. But, to a huge degree, we’re grateful about the same things: family, health, being relatively better off than others, having at least a little bit of stability. And the prompt specifically asks about being “thankful in a surprising way.“ That feels hard to do. Tolstoy wrote one of the most famous opening lines to a novel: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” If you’re in a happy family, it seems, there’s no way to write about your happiness in a unique, surprising way.
I’m no Tolstoy, but I reject the idea that you can’t be both happy and unique. A grateful person can be just as quirky and individual as a miserable person. Someone with no “sob story” can be just as inspiring and worthwhile as someone with far too many sob stories. It may just take some more intentional thought to realize it. To write well about gratitude, we need to do what my wife does and make something both new and traditional. If you’re interested in cultivating gratitude, whether for an application essay, better mental health, or just as a thought exercise, here are some approaches.
Think small. You’re grateful to have a healthy body? Excellent. Now, be more specific. Pick three or four specific body parts, internal and external, and think about why you’re grateful for them. For example, I’m extremely grateful for my nose. Noses don’t get a lot of attention (there’s not q wide variety of jewelry or makeup for noses; ever seen a tattooed nose?), but I pay a lot of attention to my nose. It’s actually where most taste comes from, and I enjoy good food more than I enjoy most anything else. My nose contributes to a lot of my joy. As I get older and my allergies lessen, my nose is less a problem area for me. Fewer sniffles, more flavors. My nose is also a strong reminder of family. My mother’s genes for nose shape must be dominant, because all four of my siblings and I have her nose. Both of my kids have the same nose. My three-month-old niece? Same nose. There’s a variety of hair, height, and eyes in the family, but our noses are a reminder of our shared biology and history.
You can do the same thing for small items in your life. When it comes to gratitude, we tend to focus on the big things: beds, cars, computers, things like that. But what about the small things? All of us should be more grateful for toothbrushes than we are. And door locks. And ice cubes. There are probably many things people have done that you should be thankful for, but that you overlook. They’re probably small things. Work on thinking of some.
What do people praise you for? I ask all my students this question in our first meeting: what do teachers, your family, and other adults praise you for? When say good things about you, what are they? Everyone has difficulty answering this question at first. There’s always a long pause. But then, after they think about it, I hear wonderful things. My teachers praise me for being a leader who can get the group back on track. Everyone says I’m a good writer and can express myself. I’m the person people count on to ask a good question. People say I’m a hard worker. Thinking about what you’re praised for is a great place to think about gratitude. This thing you’re good at: what innate qualities make that possible for you? What people help make it possible? What systems and traditions help make it possible? What habits make it possible, and where did you learn those habits? What continual practice keeps you good at it, and who helps you with that practice? When a leader or a star wins a prize, it’s common to say “I couldn’t have done this without the team that made it possible.” When you get praised for something, think about it the same way. Who are the team that made it possible? Is there anything there to be thankful for in a surprising way?
Not getting what you deserve. Everyone wants to get what they deserve—nobody likes feeling disappointed or cheated But there’s a lot of gratitude to be found in not getting what you deserve sometimes. Start by thinking of times you got more of a good thing than you deserved. The seventh chicken nugget in the six-pack you paid for. The five dollar bill you found on the ground. The teacher who didn’t count a late assignment as being late, or bumped up a grade a little bit. Again, the things above and beyond what we deserve are usually small things, but that doesn’t make them any less available for gratitude.
Getting less than you deserve is often annoying. It’s often unfair. It’s sometimes truly tragic or oppressive. And sometimes it’s a blessing. I know several people who broke an arm or leg as a kid doing stupid things like jumping off the roof just for fun. I did stupid things like that, and deserve at least one broken bone. But somehow I lucked out and got less than I deserved. I’m grateful. At least once that I know of, I wasn’t paying enough attention and ran a stop sign. But there was nobody there to notice or to run into. I deserved an accident, a ticket, getting honked and yelled at. I didn’t get what I deserved, and I’m grateful. It feels good to get what you deserve, but there is often gratitude to be found in getting something other than what you deserved.
None of these exercises—looking at the small things, exploring the roots of what you’re praised for, thinking about the good side of not getting what you deserve—are going to quickly become a response to the Common App prompt about being happy or thankful in a surprising way. But they can eventually lead to a strong response. And even if they don’t, they can help you cultivate that healthy sense of gratitude in ways other than gratitude journals. Nothing against journaling, but it’s nice to know there are more techniques out there.
Here’s to a happy holiday season. I know it can be stressful and difficult, especially for seniors who, on top of all the other things, have applications due soon. Acknowledge and validate the difficult things, don’t try to just ignore them. But also find some small things to be grateful for.
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