Gratitude’s Hidden Gifts: Seeing the Unseen in Life
Why does the fourth bite of dessert rarely taste as good as the first?
It’s a curious thing, isn’t it? I've done it, and I suspect you've done it as well. My favorite dessert is placed in front of me, I grab the fork, take the first bite, and I'm in heaven. It’s a moment of pure joy when the texture, aroma, and taste blend together in perfect harmony. But by the fourth bite I've forgotten about the food and I'm engrossed in the debate raging around the table regarding the current drama of the day. What happened? Did the food suddenly stop being amazing?
As human beings we’re wired to go for the dopamine hit. If it feels good do it and if it feels great do more of it. We have to do more because our body quickly adapts to the high and is screaming for more. So if your favorite food doesn’t keep getting better and better with each bite, your mind quickly dismisses it and goes looking for the next bit of excitement, in this case the drama at the dinner table
But this experience of diminishing returns isn’t just about food.
It mirrors our relationship with gratitude. In the beginning, gratitude feels like a rush, a dopamine hit that makes us feel good. As we go around the table at Thanksgiving and tell one thing we are grateful for, what comes out is something that makes us feel good - like the first bite of our favorite food. But over time, we forget to notice it as much. Just like the fourth bite of food, we lose sight of the many blessings that once felt so significant.
We think that gratitude is just about appreciating the things and circumstances that make us happy and simplify our lives. And yes, that’s part of it, but it's so much deeper, bigger, messier, and greater than that. It’s about recognizing how every blessing is connected to the world around us.
Michael Singer, author of The Untethered Soul, teaches about ‘low hanging fruit’, referring to easy, surface-level aspects of life that we tend to notice first - like the obvious things we are grateful for. These are the gifts we see quickly, just like the apples on the apple tree in your backyard. The apple is the easy, obvious thing to give thanks for just like the expressions of gratitude at the beginning of our holiday meal: the new car, the A in economics, the food on the table, family, and friends. And it's great to recognize all of the good we have in our lives because we often spend too much time only seeing the challenges and everything that is going wrong and holding us back from getting what we think we want. But this is the easy stuff to be grateful for - the low hanging fruit. Gratitude goes deeper than that, just like the apple tree is more than just the apples it produces.
As we pick the apples from the tree, we can look deeper and realize the tree is providing us with more things to be grateful for all year round: the springtime experience of smelling the sweet blossoms, its shade on a sunny, summer day, and fallen leaves in the autumn to compost in the garden. Going deeper we see the tree gives us fresh oxygen to breathe and a way to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and smoking chips for the grill once its life is over. Suddenly the tree becomes a part of our life and we are richer for the realization.
Gratitude isn’t just about naming the obvious things we’re thankful for.
It’s about looking deeper - recognizing the unseen forces that make them possible. Let's go beyond the obvious on a deeper journey through mindfulness with the Thanksgiving prayer - I am thankful for this new car.
You’re grateful for the car because it’s shiny and new - that’s a big dopamine hit that gets the juices flowing. Pretty soon though the new car will just be the car (remember the difference between the first bite and the fourth?) and you'll no longer think about it, it’s just another thing you own and have to take care of. But what if, when you were thankful for the car, you looked deeper.
Thich Nhat Hanh was a Buddhist monk who taught the concept of interbeing. He encouraged us to look deeply into life and see the interconnectedness between everything within and around us. Let’s take this concept and look deeply into what gratitude for a new car might look like. First, you’re grateful for your ability to save money. Then, you remember the person who taught you the value of saving money patiently without obsessing over it. As you dig deeper, you realize you’re grateful for living in a society where you can earn enough to save. This leads you to appreciate the bank that helped you invest your savings, and even further, you find yourself grateful for the community that supports these institutions. Now the gratitude snowball has started to roll down the hill.
When looking for things to be grateful for, don’t stop at the happy, pleasant things. The practice of gratitude involves suffering too. While suffering is not something we typically associate with gratitude, it often holds the key to deeper appreciation. It’s through the hardships - the discomforts, the challenges - that we build resilience and perspective. Think of the moments of struggle, when you couldn’t have imagined the gifts they would eventually become.
The hardships we face often reveal deeper layers of gratitude. Remember that particularly bad day at work when everything went wrong and you couldn’t wait for the end of the day so you could get away and go home? At the time, you were frustrated, even angry. But now, you see that enduring that struggle taught you patience and perseverance. It was part of the journey to get the new car even though you didn’t recognize it at the time. The days you endured the hot summer without functioning air conditioning were part of it too. All the while you were sweating bullets and pissed off at everyone and everything because you were so hot. In hindsight, those challenges were not obstacles - they were stepping stones toward a deeper appreciation of what you now have.
So if you can feel gratitude now for the suffering you endured back then, may I propose that when something you don’t like happens now, be grateful for it. Maybe you can’t see it right now, but in time, it will be something to be grateful for. Have faith in life. It always gives you what you need when you need it, even if it doesn't seem like it.
In unpacking the gratitude for the new car, we took a journey backwards to discover the interconnectedness between the car and the people and things around us. It’s always easy to look back, follow the connections, and see the web of life.
What’s difficult is seeing the gratitude for things yet to come that are a result of what is happening to us in the present moment. This makes practicing gratitude by taking a journey forwards is a little trickier. You can begin by seeing yourself using your new car.
You might realize you are grateful for your new car because you will get to work on time, you’ll be comfortably cool when driving in a heat wave, and you’ll finally be able to fit all your friends (and their bags) when you take that weekend trip to the spa. You’re setting yourself up in the vibration of gratitude that will carry you forward as life goes on.
In the early days of the Wheel of Fortune show the contestants spent their winnings shopping for prizes and one of the things I remember host Chuck Woolery saying was “Once you buy a prize it’s yours to keep!” meaning that if, in the next round of the game, you landed on the bankrupt part of the wheel, you’d lose all of your money but not your prizes.
Gratitude is like that. Once you find it, it's yours to keep, and it can’t be taken away from you. Going back to the car, once you’ve recognized all of the things, past, present, and future, to be grateful for that are a part of having that new car, that gratitude is always a part of your perspective on life. Then, when the car has an oil leak and is costing you money and time to get it fixed, you can still find ways to be grateful. For example, there’s the interesting people you’re meeting in the waiting room at the shop, the kind mechanic who is conscientiously attending to your repair making sure the leak is stopped and the new oil filter is securely and snugly in place, you’ve got some extra time away from your job/kids, and you’ll have a chance to stop at your favorite coffee shop and try their latte of the week. Once again, by relinquishing your fixation on the car, you’re firmly enmeshed in the web of life and the people and things that are integral parts of it.
Through all of this work, what you've done is taken the concept of gratitude and expanded it beyond the ‘me’ to the ‘we’. And in doing so you start to see the incredible, wonderful, beautiful, dance that's life and how we don't go through it alone; our trip is possible only through the involvement of others.
So how do you make the fourth bite of food taste just as amazing as the first?
The secret is simple: mindfulness. By paying attention, noticing the joy in the moment and appreciating everything that made the moment possible and everything made possible by that moment, we can stretch that first bite bliss into every bite.
Gratitude, like that, can grow with us - if we let it.
Let’s get cooking!
So I couldn’t write the blog and not have a recipe for you to enjoy. In keeping with the theme this recipe is uses apples.
Apples are not only a delicious snack but also have many health benefits. Here’s one you may not know. Apples are good for your bones. The phenolic compounds in apples have been shown to enhance bone density and strength. Regularly consuming apples may therefore contribute to better bone health as you age. And who doesn’t need that, right?
Apple Pie Overnight Oats
I am an overnight oats convert! They’re so easy and perfect for busy mornings. It takes just a few minutes at night to put them together and then they’re ready to go in the morning. A convenient, delicious, healthy, no fuss, no muss breakfast! And, you can put them together up to 4 days ahead of time making it a snap to do several breakfasts at once.
By combining oats with the milk of your choice, and letting the mixture sit in the refrigerator overnight, the oats absorb the liquid and soften into a creamy, read-to-eat meal by morning. This no-cook method not only saves time but also retains the oats’ nutrients, providing a fiber-rich, customizable base that can be topped with fruits, nuts, seeds, or sweeteners like honey or maple syrup for added flavor.
The addition of chia and hemps seeds bring an added hit of fiber and omega 3 fatty acids for a nutritional boost. If you’d prefer, replace with additional oats.
Apple Pie Overnight Oats
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup regular oatmeal
- 1/2 apple, grated
- 1 tbsp chia seeds
- 1 tbsp hemp seeds
- 1 tbsp raisins
- 1 tbsp chopped walnuts
- 1/8 t apple pie spice or cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp pure maple syrup
- 1 cup milk of choice
Instructions
- Add all of the ingredients to a container and stir to combine.
- Cover with a tight fitting lid and refrigerate overnight or up to four days.
- Can be served cold or hot - warm in the microwave or on the stovetop.
- Add additional milk if you would like it thinner.
Notes
- Any type of milk will work: dairy, non-dairy, and even kefir or yogurt.
- The base recipe of oatmeal, chia seeds, hemp seeds, and milk are just a starting point for any type of overnight oats you can think of.
- A few variations are:
- Blueberries, dried cranberries, and pecans.
- Raspberries, almond butter, and coconut flakes.
- Bananas, cacao nibs, and cashew butter.
- Instead of apple pie spice try using cinnamon, ginger, or cardamom or be adventurous with a little turmeric and black pepper.
Nutrition Facts
Calories
433Fat
21 gSat. Fat
5 gCarbs
48 gFiber
6 gNet carbs
42 gSugar
21 gProtein
16 gSodium
79 mgCholesterol
22 mgThere you have it!
I hope these musings on gratitude, apples, and new cars have resonated with you and gotten you thinking and cooking. Let’s carry the spirit of gratitude with us, not just at Thanksgiving, but every day until it becomes, not an emotion, but a way of living. It’s about noticing the small, everyday moments that make life beautiful and expressing appreciation for the obvious and the unnoticeable that truly enrich our lives. Incorporating gratitude into your life can be as simple as writing a gratitude journal or doing gratitude meditations. Whatever way you choose to celebrate all the things you have to be grateful for, I know that your life will be richer and fuller because of it.
Thank you for reading, and may your heart be filled with abundant moments of appreciation, as mine is filled with gratitude for you.