Gratitude and Thankfulness

I just looked up the meaning of these two words and was a little surprised by what I found. 

Gratitude (noun): the quality of being thankful, readiness to show appreciation for and return kindness. 

Thankful (adjective), pleased and relieved, or expressing gratitude and relief. Derivatives: Thankfulness (noun). 

To me, it seems that, even though we tend to use the two words interchangeably, they have slightly different meanings. Gratitude is a quality. Thankfulness is the action. In other words, we can be thankful without really being grateful. But we can’t be grateful without showing thankfulness. 

Let’s explore it a little further. Gratitude is a deeply ingrained quality. It is hardwired within us, developed either when we are children by example, by our parents, or by hardship, which shows us how small we are in the grand scheme of things. It makes us eager to tell others thank you. It makes us always ready to return favors. It is a deep quality that makes us see so many things in our lives as gifts. 

Thankfulness is also a wonderful attitude. It is what we express when things go right, when we are saved from bad situations. We are thankful when others help us, when the bad doesn’t happen or when the bad that does isn’t as bad as we feared. 

We have gratitude. We are thankful.

After that exploration I have to ask myself, do I have gratitude? Do I show thankfulness? Are they the same in my life? The answers to those questions may mean a lot to me. My answers won’t probably mean a lot to you, but your answers won’t mean much to me either. It will be a very personal thing for us to explore and means taking some time to look deeply into our own hearts to see just how deep thankfulness goes. Does it go deep enough to actually be the quality of gratefulness? 

And now I am going to throw one more word into the mix to really mess it up: Appreciation. 

Part of being thankful and grateful is appreciation, which is how we show our quality of gratitude and action of thankfulness to those who help us. We appreciate them and let them know.
Appreciation (noun), a recognition of the good qualities of someone or something. To show gratitude. 

When we are grateful we show thankfulness by appreciating the person. That, in turn, makes the person feel better about themselves and their place in our lives and encourages them to do more good because appreciation feels nice.

You know, this could change the world. 

Apple-Cranberry Crisp

2 cups cranberries

3 cups unpeeled apple slices

¾ cup sugar

½ cup butter

1 cup quick oats

½ cup flour ½ cup brown sugar

½ cup chopped nuts

Combine cranberries, apple slices and sugar in bottom of a 2-quart casserole dish. Melt butter, stir in remaining ingredients, spread over cranberries and apples. Bake in 350º oven 1 hour. Serve warm with ice cream.