Brain Food #872: On giving thanks and expecting nothing

The gospel of Luke contains the story of the cleansing of the ten lepers. Jesus healed all of them, but only one returned to give thanks. Jesus then said, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?”

In his book On Benefits, Seneca wrote, “While the greatest vices are common, none is more common than ingratitude.” What makes most people ungrateful, according to Seneca, “is either an excessive regard for oneself—the deeply ingrained human failing of being impressed by oneself and one’s accomplishments—or greed or envy.”

There is something between those lines (and vices) about expectations: what one expects to receive and takes for granted, based on a false or elevated conception of who or where one is. Yet when we come into the world, the balance is zero. We are not owed a thing. Sometimes, we may even feel as if we are owed gratitude itself, and therefore come to expect it.

Thanksgiving nowadays serves as an annual reminder to be grateful, even if the holiday is enveloped in consumerism. The key word in its name, ‘giving’, is the opposite of taking, a reminder that gratitude, at its core, is never an act of receiving. Thus, one must strive to give it, but never expect it. Doing so would be falling back into Seneca’s vices, the expectation that the world owes us some form of recognition, or expecting the other nine lepers to return.

After all, Seneca continues to say that despite the presence of ingratitude, one must go on giving, or ‘providing their benefits’ to others:

“Just as the farmer sows again after a bad crop in the hope of a better yield; just as sailors voyage again after a shipwreck; just as the lost traveller seeks to find his way again; so we should not allow ingratitude to stifle our generosity. It is worthwhile to have had experience with the ungrateful, if we can come upon even one person who is grateful.”

Perhaps on the flip side of giving thanks is thanklessness, a dual act of not expressing gratitude, but also of not expecting recognition. Think about thankless jobs that are essential yet go barely noticed, rarely appreciated. Garbage collectors, maintenance workers, warehouse employees, cashiers, even nurses.

In the Wim Wenders film Perfect Days, the protagonist, Hirayama, is a public toilet cleaner in Tokyo. His days are simple, uneventful and, in ...