Gratitude is impossible.
It seems like every tie I read something about personal development it eventually ends up in one of two conclusions.
- Meditate
- Be grateful
I’ve definitely tried to meditate more than once, including a 30-day stint at an ashram and a 10-day silent meditation retreat. I’ve also tried gratitude, keeping a list of 3–10 things I’m grateful for at both the beginning and end of the day.
What I’ve learned is that neither is a quick success bullet like I had hoped.
Gratitude in particular feels impossible at times, especially for an “entitled millennial” like myself, I often find myself nit-picking and being overly self-critical. I use the quotation marks because often people who criticize millennials also don’t realize how self-critical millennials can be. They think that we are okay relying on our parents when often times we hate ourselves for it.
We’re also completely ungrateful, because to be grateful would be to acknowledge we’ve been given something, and to receive something that is given willfully in this day and age is seen as weak.
I know it’s my own perceptions of what a blessing is that I need to change before I can make gratitude a possibility for myself. However, I often find myself overanalyzing why I’m not further in life, and why my successes are not greater. When something is given to me or falls in my lap, I almost wish I had more struggles like the people from an older generation who I’ve looked up to as role models. It’s a lose-lose.
Gratitude is impossible. Maybe.
