What prevents us from being happy is feeling like victims of our environment and interpreting the ups and downs of everyday life as obstacles to our well-being or our happiness. In itself, this perspective is quite reactive: we respond positively or negatively to what we experience each day. In short, our happiness is largely conditioned by what surrounds us: misadventures become sources of discomfort and unhappiness, while fortunate events become our main source of joy. But what if lasting happiness lay elsewhere? What if the source of joy came from another place—one that didn’t depend on our circumstances or our results?
Gratitude as an Antifragile Remedy to the World’s Volatility
If our happiness is fragile, it is because it depends on circumstances beyond our control, and these circumstances change constantly. This impermanence of life inevitably creates anxiety about happiness. Since our happiness depends on unstable things, feeling anxious is natural.
Instead of letting our happiness depend on external things, it is better to build it according to an antifragile model: your happiness isn’t tied to a fluctuating idea but rather to a value that grows continuously, even during difficult experiences. This value is nothing new, since it is a recurring theme in personal development. Let’s see how it embodies antifragility.
Gratitude Grows in Joy, Chaos, Pain, and Sadness
Have you ever met elderly people who radiate an incredible light? If you’ve had the chance to know them more deeply and learn about their past, it’s not uncommon to discover that they’ve endured terrible hardships: war, early loss of parents, exile, childhood illness, and so on.
Yet despite — or rather thanks to — these trials, they managed to preserve and develop an unmatched warmth of soul. Their secret? They maintained a constant attitude of gratitude, regardless of the circumstances.
Perhaps this mindset grew through prayer. Perhaps they haven’t always been this way. Either way, the result is admirable in terms of character. What can we learn from such people? Certainly that painful experiences can help us become better and even happier individuals. It is therefore worth understanding how gratitude works.
The Mechanics of Gratitude
Being grateful means seeing in each experience — good or bad — a lesson or a gift. Since we tend to remember our painful failures most vividly, difficult experiences bring many lessons, and perhaps they are the ones from which we learn the most.
Gratitude looks at the world without discrimination, as long as it sees beyond appearances. Take the example of someone who has just lost their dog. The first reaction would be to lament and ask why this beloved being was taken away. The gratitude-filled approach would be to thank — God, the Universe, or life itself — for the chance to have known such a wonderful companion for so many years. Gratitude helps us cope with loss and, above all, appreciate the presence of people and things while they are still with us.
Gratitude Restores Value to Your Perception of Life
It is not lack that causes sadness or unhappiness, but the impression of lacking. Often, you believe you’re missing something material, while what you’re truly missing is a bit of soul to appreciate life’s simple things.
Someone greedy, even with all the gold in the world, will always be insatiable. But give a wise ascetic just a single square of chocolate, and you will brighten their entire day with the light of gratitude.
The issue is rarely what we look at, but how we look at it.
Gratitude Could Work Miracles and Transform Society in One Generation
The 20th century was the height of materialistic ideologies (capitalism and communism), and we’ve seen their consequences. The current century will have to be spiritual, or it won’t be — to paraphrase André Malraux. Why? Simply because humanity cannot afford to preserve civilization under the threat of a high-intensity nuclear war.
The remedy for a world on the brink is to help it endure by embodying gratitude daily — in our hearts and in our actions.
Gratitude Ends the Infernal Cycle of Comparison
If you tend to compare your life to that of others, I bet you feel dissatisfied most of the time. Gratitude prevents comparison because, instead of looking at what others have, you focus on your own situation.
Gratitude connects you to both the present moment and the place where you truly are, not to a fantasized elsewhere. With gratitude, you free yourself from an idealized past and an overly embellished future, focusing instead on the only thing you truly have: the present.
Gratitude Teaches How to Let Go
Even if you have almost nothing left, if you can value the little you still possess, then you can never be truly unhappy. The constant desire for more is often a sign of someone who is unsatisfied, never happy, and without a doubt lacking gratitude.
Gratitude soothes the wounds of the heart and the soul, but it is a new habit to cultivate, for it is rarely taught today. The modern, consumerist world can only function because people are unhappy and dissatisfied, always searching for another place, another moment. The constant use of smartphones is a testimony to this — a permanent flight from the present moment and from what is right before our eyes.
