Tag: gratitude

Gratitude is My Attitude. Guest post by Maria Flora Mangano.

Thankfulness may become mutual, as it is focused on our approach to the Other.

Working with students can be more than a job; it may become a life choice, an answer to a call, which we choose every day. It may turn into an attitude, a perspective on reality, a vision of the world centered on the Other rather than on us. This approach may also change our relationship to our students, and, far more broadly, with our daily lives.

…If we can shift the center of gravity from ourselves to the Other, we may experience gratitude as a pure feeling which does not depend on us, thus on our abilities, successes, or results. It reminded me of the I-Thou relationship as theorized by Martin Buber (1937), thus, the basic idea that the relationship lies in the between, perhaps in the hyphen between, the I and the Thou (Mangano, 2018, p. 27). It is a space which depends neither on the I, nor on the Thou; it is in the middle, in the between, in the “space of us.”

When we are able to decenter ourselves and put the Other at the center of the scene, we may also see what already exists, rather than what is missing. We may experience wonder, as we do not expect a gift: the Other may already be a gift, and we do not need any additional expectation. This approach, that of an unexpected surprise, may provide a new perspective on reality as a glass half-full; sometimes even completely full. In this attitude, gratitude sounds likely to be close to hope, an endless source of water although just a few drops may be enough, as they can guarantee the strength to carry on.

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