Anon's Story - How Gratitude Made Me An Artist
"Take out your canvas..."
Have you ever wondered why, after being upfront and finally appreciating the ones you love, you get those chills on your nerves? Or that redness on your face after you hug your father for a long time, and that feeling coming from your internal system as if you're about to cry your eyes out right now – do you ever think about why all those things happen when you express gratitude?
The answer's pretty simple: our body releases lots of “love hormones”, which makes us feel very positive and admired. But if we think about it in a very “philosophical sense,” then the answer would be like this: we, as humans, don’t get much time to express gratitude to someone else and even ourselves, to -
Wait! What did I just say: we “don’t get much time to express gratitude”? Isn’t it really silly that we, humans, get surrounded by negative stuff so much that we seriously think we don’t have “time for that,” while in actuality, we are the ones who are violating it?
The thing is, we just don’t value the “art of gratitude” that much, just because our silly mind sees it as being “picky” or “seeking attention.” I don’t know if I’m the only one, but this particular thing has happened with all of us when we go on to express gratitude to someone else, as we start overthinking about what they would feel about us.
I would love to tell my story on this case. I once shared a story on my Instagram profile telling how my best friend has made me feel loved, but since he is a “man,” I was pretty scared that he’d think something else about me or he’d think that I’m seeking attention from him. Surprisingly, as I was about to delete it, he replied to the story, and he told me that he was actually happy seeing all this.
It was after all that research that I finally realized that the only thing that has been stopping me from expressing gratitude to everyone I like and, in fact, myself, was my belief that openly expressing gratitude gives your personality a bad image in front of others. I mean, yes, excessively doing that is wrong, but I still don’t understand why people think that expressing gratitude is not a moral act at all and it’s rather a symbol of being “picky.”
Now that I’m an artist in this art of gratitude, I have known all the answers to these questions. Society has always been bullshit: it loves making people do abnormal things in the name of “morality,” which degrades our thoughts on being open about what we feel because we think that others will judge us for that, while actually, we are the normal persons among this whole crowd of abnormal humans with plastic faces.
When you express gratitude to someone, you become confident about yourself. You feel like nothing’s stopping you. And when you are grateful enough, your skill of socializing with people will also improve. You will have no enemies at all!
Try expressing gratitude to one of your friends. I’m pretty sure he’ll like it even if he won’t show it but he’ll feel admired and seen. It’s not a bad thing to express your gratitude to someone else.
I myself now practice self-gratitude, and it has brought lots of positive impacts to my life. Everywhere I go, I shine like a star. I’ve been maintaining good relations with my family members, and that doesn’t make my life chaotic anymore like it was in the beginning. Everything has changed!
Listen to this artist: trust yourself, forget about what the world would say, take out your canvas, and start painting all that you want. And I bet, this would be a Mona Lisa masterpiece, dragging lots of people to the museum, and they will surely appreciate you if they understand that you’re genuine.
And maybe, your acts will also inspire others to become future Picassos in this art of gratitude.
