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I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. – G. K. Chesterton
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| Achilles tends to Patroclus |
By what quirk of fate I know not but the quote above fortuitously percolated its way to my attention in my Twitter feed this afternoon. I say fortuitous because of the wonderful counterpoint it plays to a short story about gratitude I came upon this morning, also by chance, via a friend. From him I read a brief expression of love from a woman, now passed, for her grandson. "What a joy you are to me," she wrote. Now I did just say the letter expressed love but truly the first word that occurred to me was thanks. We of course will not indulge that facile tendency to say that two things are the same but there is of course much of thanks in love. A specific kind of thanks, mind you.
It is not the thanks for equitable exchange or thanks for justice. It is not even strictly thanks for kindness since the kind act, for all its good, can be done simply for the sake of kindness and not the individual. It is not even thanks for emulating, that is to say, thanks to someone for providing a good example. Why? All of these forms of thanks imply some kind of utility, ulterior gain, or adherence to some other principal to which the deed is ancillary. As The Philosopher instructs us, friendships of utility love not for themselves but some good gained, that is, some good for you, be it pleasure or convenience. These relationships are facile and feeble. Often they are not even mutual but when such utilitarian friendships are mutual it is best when each gets the same from each.
We may observe in the above examples there is indeed, though, some element of thanks, of gladness at the happy accident, the fortunate turn of events, a kindness, an obliged return and so forth. Yet from any of the Latin forms, grates and gratus, it is hard to tease out from the quotidian sentiments any pure sense of unobliged, useless thankfulness, what I propose to call gratitude. Useless, I say?
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| Venus |
Yes, useless, though it may sound a strange thing. We scarcely realize it but we are trained to use things, all things. Commerce, rather reasonably, trains us to use things. Today art trains us to use it and it is indeed use because without any sense of purpose such as religiosity or beauty it can only be used, to rouse and pleasure or relax and mollify, even to conjure an image or emotion. Such works, even great ones, exist to do and do for you or even to you, rather than simply be. Education too teaches us to use. Science teaches us to use nature only to manipulate it and to gain knowledge to get a job. English teaches us to write just to learn about ourselves. Economics teaches us to work only so we may spend. Even philosophy itself is abused to the point of utility today because without some view of man's nature and his good, whether it be Aristotle's contemplative life or some other, without true philo-sophia, it is simply a tool of breaking down, of de-struction.
The love of someone or something for its own sake then is something quite special. To have gratitude not toward but for someone and not because of any qualities but for the sum of that person, to have gratitude for a work of art not because of what it does but what it is, is to have gratitude for that which makes up an important part of living. To know such gratitude, in giving or receiving, is to make a joy of being in the world, and thus "that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."
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