Attitude of Gratitude
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
An attitude of gratitude
is a posture.
A public-facing inclination of the chin.
A practiced brightness that survives
even when sincerity does not.
It is gratitude as doctrine—
recited,
recommended,
applied like a solvent
meant to dissolve discomfort
without examining its source.
I have worn it before.
I have said thank you
while my teeth were clenched.
I have counted blessings
as if enumeration alone
could transmute grief into virtue.
But gratitude, real gratitude,
is not a mood you adopt.
It is an orientation you earn.
It does not arrive on command.
It resists coercion.
It refuses to be weaponized
against pain that has not yet been metabolized.
Authentic gratefulness
is not cheerful.
It is honest.
It does not deny fracture—
it acknowledges the cost
and still chooses presence.
I am not there yet.
I am somewhere between
recognition and embodiment.
Between the intellectual knowing
that life is a gift
and the deeper knowing
that feels it without effort.
I can see it, though—
that horizon where gratitude is no longer
a corrective measure
but a natural consequence
of attention.
Where thankfulness emerges
not because I was told to look for it,
but because I finally did.
This kind of gratitude
is slower.
More discerning.
It does not ask me
to bypass my truth.
It asks me to stay with it
until meaning begins to surface
on its own terms.
It is incompatible with denial.
It cannot coexist with performance.
It grows only where authenticity
has cleared the ground.
So I practise—not gratitude yet,
but readiness.
I practise noticing without forcing.
I practise reverence without obligation.
I practise telling the truth about where I am
instead of pretending I have arrived.
Because when gratitude finally comes—
and I believe it will—
it will not be loud.
It will not be branded.
It will not need an attitude.
It will be quiet.
Integrated.
Undeniable.
Not a posture,
but a way of inhabiting the world
without flinching.
And when I reach it,
I will not announce it.
I will simply live
as someone who knows
the difference
between saying thank you
and actually meaning it.
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