Getting Pretty Deep In Here

Grateful:  Appreciate; thankful.  (Ed. Note: Are you kidding me?  I was expecting a grotesquely involved definition, not these two simple words.  Sigh.  Another attempt to complicate a simple concept foiled!)

Thankful:  Showing appreciation or gratitude.  (Ed. Note: D'oh!  I'm trapped in a semantic loop of circular definition logic!  I'm stuck!  I can't escape!)

I am learning a lot from this book on the very old.  Man, these people have a lot of wisdom to share.  I'm enjoying the fact that the author began this exercise with many of the same preconceived notions that I have about aging; namely, that it's all about loss, when in reality it's all about acceptance and gratitude.  Man, I hate those concepts.  The hair on the back of my neck is standing at attention just thinking about gratitude.

An extensive study was done where a group of people was asked to record their thoughts about gratitude while another group wrote down the stuff that annoyed them.  The results?  The group that kept a Gratitude List (ever heard of one of those, Program People?) began to report a greater sense of optimism and well-being, and the effects actually began to show up in their blood pressure and heart rate and sleep patterns.  Wait, it gets worse . . . er, better.  Worse if you're not doing one of these things every day.  The longer the gratitude people persisted at this exercise the the more pronounced the results.

One important caveat must be pointed out:  "It was not enough to be conscious of one's advantages; one had to be grateful for them.  Advantages alone - even awareness of them - weren't enough, perhaps because they can be lost.  Gratitude, on the other hand, was an affirmation that the world gave you things, and might continue to do so."

Contrast this to my normal mind set: that the world is out to screw me.  I'm going to lose what I already have, not be given additional blessings or the ability to transcend the difficulties that will inevitably come my way.

In a later post I'll parse out the subtle differences between a positive attitude on one hand, and the always-getting-screwed attitude on the other.

Another interesting study took MRI brain scans as people experienced nice and good things.  Some subjects were given a free, extremely delicious piece of pie - it was observed that the pleasure reward centers in their brains lit up like a Christmas Tree.  The study then gave other people a smaller, somewhat crappier piece of pie but a piece of pie delivered by a loved one.  There was still activity in the pleasure part of the brain - noticeably smaller - but now it was seen that areas that record social satisfaction also became engaged.  The person who ate the crappy pie actually enjoyed it more.

So caveat emptor: if you're always looking for more bigger pieces of pie good luck with all that.

But let's not go overboard and be idiots about gratitude and happiness, either.  We're all the sum of our own personal genetics and the experiences we lived through when we were growing up.

"Researchers believe that each of us has a general “set point” or average level of happiness that we hover around through our lives’ ups and downs.  If something good happens - say, we win the lottery - we’re joyful for a while, but eventually we return more or less to where we were before. Ditto with setbacks.  This set point, which seems based on some combination of genes and environment, explains why some people can be happy in dire circumstances, and others miserable in enviable ones.  But there is some evidence that we are not slaves to our set point - that we can nudge it upward by regular acts of gratitude or altruism, and by not brooding on our troubles."

Brood:  To dwell upon moodily and at length.