How Can Someone Develop Gratitude?

How does education influence the development of depression or happiness? Why, in an age of abundance, don’t we feel grateful for what we have? What is the key principle for attaining unlimited happiness?

By nature, a person is like an empty computer that needs to be filled with programs that define how it will operate. The care a newborn receives, the family in which they grow up, and the social environment that later surrounds them, all these build different patterns of relating within a person, according to which they will function throughout their life. Naturally, these patterns will also influence their emotional and psychological state.

A quick look at changes in education and development shows that at the beginning of the 20th century, children were still treated very strictly. It is well known that in some of the most prestigious institutions in England, children were beaten, made to bathe in cold water, and subjected to other hardships in order to toughen them up and prepare them for success. After World War II, education became somewhat gentler, and children themselves also changed. By the 1960s, young people were already inclined toward revolution. They rebelled against everything their parents represented and wanted to build a new and better world by their own strength. In the 21st century, parents are busy working from morning until night and often have little idea what is happening with their children, while much of their communication takes place through text messages. The children, for their part, have become passive. They have little desire to move around too much. Comfort is what matters. Period. And if young adults are comfortable living with their parents even at the age of thirty, they see no problem with that.

With each of these generational changes, the definitions of success and happiness have changed as well. In the past, you might have invested tremendous effort in order to excel in your studies, science, or art, for example, and from this you would receive both personal satisfaction and appreciation from those around you. Today, this interests you much less. Who has the energy to run around like crazy? Young people are tired of life before they have even begun living it. Deep inside, they feel that all the effort is hardly worthwhile if everyone ends up taking anti-anxiety medication anyway. Give them a new phone every year and let them spend hours lying on the couch.

Depression has become an illness of the century, and in an age of abundance, it is difficult to find anything that arouses genuine excitement or enjoyment. Children have almost everything from the outset. Nothing is truly lacking, and therefore there is little basis for great excitement. In general, pleasure can only be felt against the background of a “deficiency,” and this is the great problem facing the coming generation.

Some people therefore say, “Learn to be grateful. Be thankful for what you have in life, and it will bring you joy.” But the human ego is constantly developing, and at an accelerating pace. What has already been attained no longer excites us or brings satisfaction; it becomes routine. Eventually, the inner distress will reach such a level that it will compel us to advance toward an entirely different reality, instead of merely trying to look at the half-full glass.

Deciphering the secret of happiness is going to be the next great project. It will require us to deeply study the mechanism of deficiency and fulfillment, that is, the sensation of lack and the sensation of pleasure and enjoyment. True happiness, in the fullest sense of the word, must be perfect and eternal, something that does not disappear as quickly as it arrives. Such happiness depends on a special connection between the individual and society. It requires both a great deficiency and a powerful fulfillment, while the fulfillment does not eliminate the sensation of deficiency. What does this mean?

Consider the following: When a person desperately wants something, when something is terribly lacking, say they are thirsty and for hours cannot find even a drop of water to drink, how happy are they when they can finally drink their fill? The first sips are like cold water to a weary soul. But after one glass, and then another, the pleasure diminishes until it disappears entirely from sensation. Similarly, when we are tired, we enjoy sleep, and when we are hungry, we enjoy a meal. Our entire life is one long pursuit of a new deficiency, followed by fulfillment and pleasure. Minus and plus, respectively, constantly canceling one another out.

The secret of happiness lies in preventing the deficiency and fulfillment from extinguishing one another. Nature gives us a clue that this is possible when we become parents. Suppose we have waited several years for a child, and finally our wish is fulfilled. We constantly fuss over the baby, thinking about how to give them the very best. What else can we bring them, prepare for them, buy for them? How can we improve their surroundings? There is no greater satisfaction. Love causes us to give and give, while continually experiencing more and more pleasure. When we love, the deficiency to give is never extinguished.

Of course, we experience our children almost as part of ourselves, so this does not yet represent conscious personal development. Other people, however, and society in general, feel foreign to us. It is precisely in our relationship toward them that the breakthrough point lies.

If we learn the method of rising from our egoistic nature to a new nature of love for others, then the deficiency and fulfillment we experience will no longer cancel each other out, and the feeling of happiness will never cease. When it comes to giving, no one can stop you, limit you, or take the pleasure away from you.

From an evolutionary perspective, the great task of the 21st century is to build an integral society that functions like one body, with all its parts acting like organs that complement one another in their deficiencies and fulfillments, based on a deep understanding and recognition that this is the only state in which true flow can exist. Life in nature exists on the basis of connection and integration between opposites, between plus and minus, heat and cold, day and night, and so forth.

In our more advanced state, we will give one another positive examples of love and giving. As a result, we will awaken in one another an ever-greater deficiency to give to others and express love. Gradually, this will bring us to a new quality of happiness, unlimited development, and the discovery of a higher, spiritual level of existence, above life and death, above time, space, and motion, within the wholeness and eternity of creation. And for this historic opportunity opening before us today, a wonderful development that in the past was attained only by a select few, this is something truly worth being grateful for.

Based on "New Life 241 – Happiness and Gratitude" with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.