This Is What (Stoic) Gratitude Actually Looks Like

Gratitude is one of those things that’s simple…but not easy.

Today is Thanksgiving in America. It’s a day that we’re supposed to center around gratitude. The usual candidates come to mind: family, health, and the food in front of us. And rightly so. These are the cornerstones of a fortunate life, and they deserve recognition and appreciation.

But what about all the other stuff? The obstacles. The frustrations. The wrong turns. The difficult people. The bad days.

Should we be grateful for those too?

Yes — those especially.

Especially because they are hard to be grateful for.

Epictetus was born into slavery and he spent the next thirty years in that institution. He wasn’t even given a name–Epictetus just means acquired one. He was tortured. And when he finally found freedom, he was almost immediately exiled by a tyrannical emperor.

You know in Les Mis where she sings about how the dream she dreamed was so much different than the hell she was living? That was basically Epictetus’ real-life story. Yet what he came away with was not bitterness, but gratitude. The key to life, he said, was not to dream for things to be a certain way, but to dream for them to be the way they were. To be grateful that you had the…