Brene Brown, a well-known social scientist and author, uses a term called “hot wiring connection.” Per Brown, this is when people try to shortcut connection with others by sharing too much information too quickly. Think oversharing of personal details from someone you don’t know well, gossiping, or bonding over a common enemy. Hot wired connections like these may feel good in the moment, but since they’re essentially acts of manipulative grasping for attention from an ego, the connections are riddled with insecurity and can be harmful in the long run.
I have seen this same type of hot wiring occur in many people’s connection with gratitude. The egoic mind is always trying to search for ways to make us feel better. It will take a natural, free-flowing body-mind experience like gratitude and weaponize it to use in the fight against “negative” feelings. Even if the moment has us feeling exhausted, defeated, constricted, and downright low, the egoic mind will step up to hot wire gratitude in order to resist the feelings that are actually there.
We may hear ourselves saying:
“Yeah, this is hard, but I should just be grateful for everything that I have.”
“At least I’m not living in a war zone/starving/in the hospital/homeless, etc. I’m grateful for what I have, because there are so many people who have it worse than me!”
What if these well-meaning attempts to “look on the bright side” are simply the mind’s way of hot wiring gratitude to escape uncomfortable feelings? It seems to me that forcing a gratitude connection using judgment, comparison, or shame is not actually gratitude. Is it? Maybe it’s yet another of the mind’s attempts to divert us away from the truth of our felt experience of NOW in order to avoid discomfort...?
Look, there is absolutely nothing wrong with practicing gratitude. It can be a beautiful thing to do. In my experience, though, when I’m not lost in the tightness of believing I’m a separate self in a scary world, gratitude bubbles up freely of its own accord…. Often! But, if I’m having a really uncomfortable time, sometimes it’s nice to take a moment and think of tangible things I am grateful for… but only after I acknowledge and physically feel the yucky emotions that are visiting. In these times, gratitude may act as a soothing balm, not as a means of resistance of what is.
So, the next time we hear ourselves saying, “At least….” in order to hot wire our connection to gratitude, let’s be curious about the source of our discomfort. Maybe we’ll be aware enough and brave enough to turn our attention toward the ick, even if it’s just for a few moments. And maybe we’ll discover that gratitude is hiding just below the surface; no forced connection required.