Delphic Maxim 106: Be grateful
I’ve set myself the challenge of responding to each of the Delphic Maxims for 15 minutes a day.
106. Be grateful
I am typing today’s maxim on a train heading from Vienna to Prague. I’m using my iPhone to do it, because I reckon it’s easier to type on this than to fumble around awkwardly with an iPad (or my Mac, which is out of battery). I have a beer, I’m on holiday, the weather is nice. I am lucky, and I feel a kind of sense of gratitude, directed at nobody in particular.
I suppose if I were a religious person, I would be grateful to god or gods, or whatever spiritual force delivered me this good fortune. In fact, we’ve seen in earlier maxims that recognising good fortune is important as well. So I understand when people experience fortune as a gift, and they are grateful for it.
Gratitude isn’t just a nebulous thing though – it doesn’t only apply in situations where we are living a good life. Being grateful also involves recognising the good things that people do for us – it’s another expression of politeness in our social relations. When someone does us a favour, we are grateful, and it’s important that we tell them that we are grateful. Otherwise the risk is a kind of greedy hubris – and hubris took down more men and gods in mythology than any other factor.
There’s a really important thing to remember here too: being grateful isn’t about reciprocity, which we’ve discussed before. There may be times when it’s appropriate to get a person something in return for a favour – but being grateful is a more basic, heartfelt gesture. It’s almost like this maxim is inviting us to reflect on our inner state of feeling – less about what we show (though I think that’s also important) and more about what we feel.
Why is this a maxim? What benefit does this have for us today?
I think it comes down to a kind of humility, but also with our sense of living decently with each other. I just spent a couple of days hanging with a friend of mine from Canada, and he told us that he’s so trusting with his stuff (wallet, bag) when travelling because at home he doesn’t have to think about it. He’s travelling the world, and realised that he can’t just leave things lying around because there’s a risk that they might be stolen. This made me think: doesn’t a good society mean that we are all able to relax – if everyone is kind to everyone else, then we all get to live easier.
Gratitude is a part of building this good society. It is about saying to ourselves (and to each other) that we appreciate what we are given, and what we do for one another. It sounds utopian – and it probably is – but this kind of humility is as good a place as any to start building a community that is easier to live in.
