Gratitude. A Gussied-Up Version of Subjugation
You have the life you dreamed of. The husband, kids, job, dogs, group of friends, hobbies, even the 7-seater SUV that fits everything you need, but is cooler than a minivan. You have it all.
And yet…
You awake everyday to the gentle, but ever-present hum of “Is this all there is?”
Sometimes you can quiet the hum, maybe when you have a girls’ night or the luxurious, but infrequent girls’ weekend. Or when you’ve convinced yourself that waking up before the rest of the family is something you actually enjoy because it’s your time, it’s quiet time. And that’s true, you do enjoy it. It is quiet.
But why do you need to escape all the things and people you dreamed about to be happy? Why is the dream on loop in your mind now escaping from the life you built, not building it?
What is this loop telling us? When I was doing more clinical, direct practice, but even in many other roles, including as a mom and a partner, I ascribe to the understanding that “behavior is communication.” Behavior tells us a lot, it tells us what we prefer (ala revealed preferences), it tells us when behaviors are meeting needs, no matter how tragic or toxic. Behavior leaves clues, they tell us what we really want or, if it isn’t communicating that clearly, it tells us what drives us.
This hum is also telling us something.
This loop, like a reel just replaying and replaying, without any algorithm asking us if we want to “watch again” is playing in our minds. We try so hard to either push it away through distraction and optimization or we lean into it, analyzing it in a belief that the more self-aware we become the more we will gain insight into ourselves and arrive at a place of bliss.
Along this particular pursuit of self-actualization—the pursuit towards a greater level of self-awareness—we are met with one of the many latest crazes.
The Practice of Gratitude.
Now this isn’t a very accurate phrasing. Gratitude is not new. Monks, elders, and religious leaders across generations have espoused the benefits of gratitude. Recent developments in neuroscience and behavioral sciences have been able to identify neurochemical changes in brains that consistently practice gratitude. Gratitude is, at a fundamental level, a wonderful pursuit, a productive practice, and something for everyone to strive for.
But the pursuit of gratitude has been bastardized.
It has been contorted and castrated into a tool for female subjugation. And we’re all eating it up. Not only are we eating it up, but we’re also the ones espousing the practice, like a meditative Munchausen’s syndrome.
The call is coming from inside the house.
Women are telling other women to practice gratitude. To wake up every morning and write down five things they are grateful for, to go to bed each night and pray to the gods-on-high, a acknowledging their three moments of gratitude from that day.
But the insidiousness of this practice is not that it actually supports gratitude for a life full of children and love and friendships. It is a practice meant to dampen and dilute the hum singing along, “Is this all there is? I’m not actually happy with this life I’ve built.”
Instead, gratitude claps back, “Shut up, hum. Quiet down. Fuck off. Let me write down my five fucking moments of gratitude.”
What would happen if women stopped settling and listened to their hum. Instead of pushing it to the side, subjugating it, in some sick, twisted Russian nesting doll of subjugation, we all listened to it as a trusted communicator of wisdom and knowledge? What if we said, “This hum won’t go away. It must be telling me something. It must be communicating with me, to me, for me, and from me. I won’t resist it and I won’t gratitude-journal my way through it. I will listen and I will act.”
If we all did that, well, I don’t exactly know what would happen, but I do know, the world would cease to turn the way it is currently turning. Anthropologists like Sarah Forbes would have to update her beautifully written Mama Sex when a new way of being a mother and a sexual being begins to present itself. (What a gift that would bring to the world, because the more she puts out, there better we all are for it).
I don’t know what would happen, but I do know that gratitude, in its original version is lovely, productive even. It’s beneficial to women and all genders. In its current iteration, however, usurped by capitalism, patriarchy, the “wellness” industry, and more, gratitude is just another lever by which we are being told to “know our place.” Which in and of itself is a polite way of saying, “Sit down and shut the fuck up.”
Do you hear that hum? Do you shove it deep, deep down, or turn to it, also in an effort to stifle it? Are you afraid that if you stare directly at it, you’ll befall the fate of Narcissus? But what if, by starting directly at it, you get to go back to building a life of your dreams, not escaping from it? What if?
