Just Be Grateful

Gratitude Or Bitterness?

Checking out an Airbnb in Cochabamba I came across some framed pithy sayings of which one especially caught my eye: “Just Be Grateful.”

Here was an admonition to choose gratitude over the contrary but common response of choosing bitterness. The word for ‘bitterness’ in biblical Greek is pikria, from which we derive words like "pricks" or "pinpricks." Bitterness can find its root in the common slights or pinpricks that we receive in our day-to-day routine. Nothing major—just simple pinpricks that irritate the skin, and as Lewis Smedes observes, morph into “our own joy-killing demons.”

Pricks killing our joy. Sound about right? We all experience these irritations—an annoying neighbour, a pesky colleague, an irksome relative. And we can become those same kinds of people. But despite the pricks, we can still choose the Andean message from my little Airbnb: "Just Be Grateful!"

Let's not allow the encumbrances of life to steal away our joy. Surely there are better options than bitterness and complaint. “Let’s roll with it,” as the Cochabambino further muses, and not give into life’s pinpricks. May gratitude be our heartfelt response and not dispirited pessimism.