If gratitude is the key to contentment, and contentment is the hallmark of the people of jannah – then why do grateful people still struggle so much with their mental health?
What’s the secret part of the equation where me + gratitude = inner-peace?
When Allah says, if you are grateful, I will give you more (Qur’an 14:7) when does more start being more, instead of just more of the same?
Imagine you can’t afford a car, but if you had one it would change your life entirely. As a surprise, your friend gives you a new car! You would probably be very grateful. But what happens when, on the day you most desperately need your car, your friend comes along and takes your car away. Are you still grateful? Is there any reason why you should be? Is your level of peace and contentment the same, or is it disrupted by the absence of your new car? Where does gratitude end, and rightful anger begin?
Our gratitude is owed to God, but it is tied to things.
Emotions are truthful. They don’t measure gratitude or ingratitude, but they do reflect our perspective on the world back at us. And that is profoundly helpful. Emotions can help us figure out what we’re attached to, and what we’ve decided is responsible for our happiness.
Attachment is in our nature
We are born in a state of total helplessness.
And our first lesson is that our needs can only be met by forces beyond ourselves. Gratitude is our instinctive acknowledgement that whatever we have is not from us, and that we have no power to create what we need out of nothing. This is the domain of God – who provides.
Allah says:
“Read in the name of your Lord who created you. Created you from a clinging thing/clot.” — Qur’an 96:2”
Since our very conception, we were designed to cling on to something for dear life – quite literally as an embryo clinging to the womb; or in spiritual terms as a soul clinging to our body and to manifestations of love.
This short video with Professor Omid Safi offers a fascinating interpretation of the famous clinging clot verse which sets the scene:
Clinging on vs letting go
If our nature is to be always attached to something, it raises the question: in your life, right now, who or what are you clinging to, and why? And are the things you’re holding on to most tightly also the things you feel most grateful for?
In the Qur’an, Allah reminds us about people who are in despair, then when they finally get what they want they rejoice; content. But when its taken away, they fall back into despair:
“It is Allah who sends the winds, and they stir the clouds and spread them in the sky however He wills, and He makes them fragments so you see the rain emerge from within them. And when He causes it to fall upon whom He wills of His servants, immediately they rejoice. Although they were, before it was sent down upon them – before that, in despair. Look then at the signs of Allah’s mercy, how He gives life to the earth after its death, most surely He will raise the dead to life; and He has power over all things. And if We send a wind and they see [their crops turn] yellow, they would after that certainly continue to disbelieve.” — Qur’an 30:48-51
It’s clear that when our happiness relies on things, people or circumstances, our peace of mind will always be dictated by the ever-changing nature of those things, and their presence or absence in our life. With one breath of wind, our peace could be destroyed.
But it feels counter-intuitive to me, to buy into a philosophy that simply says, “don’t get too attached”, and downright cruel to adopt a philosophy which teaches you to learn to enjoy your pain and accept it.
I don’t believe that suffering, in itself, is an art form, or praiseworthy.
Closing the gratitude loop
Loving things is natural. But gratitude is what defines the attitude of our loving nature. Say, for instance, you love someone. What if you’re not just grateful for that person, but for your ability to love them.
Let’s take it a step further…
What if you realise that your ability to love is entirely nonsensical, without love itself.
So now you become grateful for love. And when you are grateful for love, you are grateful for Allah – Al Wadud. Suddenly, you are not just grateful to Allah, but you are grateful for Allah.
Being grateful to God for God, is how love completes itself.
When you are truly grateful to God, for God, there is absolutely nothing that can short circuit the energy flow of love and connection between you and your heart’s desire.
The source of all things, and the source of your happiness, and the source of your gratitude, and the object of your love are all one and the same.
There’s an absolute forcefield around you now.
When you are entirely attached to Allah – the Creator of existence, you realign with your original nature, how you began, clinging on to the source of life, ready to give and receive love wherever you find it.
Your many earthly loves can grow and change, or even vanish into thin air, and calamity might strike you over and over – but hardship and ease become two sides of the same lucky coin in your pocket.
You love the things that pass through your life because they flow from Allah and connect you back to Allah.
Your gratitude is your shield and your inner-peace.
Allah’s promise is a binding promise coded into the universe. You will get more. But for me, gratitude isn’t about manifesting physical things – material goals, a dream life… Or about smiling through the pain. It never has been. It’s about gently letting all that we cling to fall away, as it must, until there is nothing left to cling to but Allah – the endless fountain of Love.
What if the purpose of gratitude in this life is to lead us to yet more gratitude? Imagine, gratitude on gratitude, in an infinite loop, mirrored by the eternity of jannah – the infinite garden of peace.
After all, didn’t Allah tell us – if you are grateful, I will give you more?