Gratitude is Bullshit

December 30, 2015 By Lise Quintana in Uncategorized 2 Comments

There is a disturbing trend among liberals to talk about gratitude. Everyone’s encouraged to have gratitude for the abundance in their lives. Everyone’s supposed to be grateful for all their blessings. On the surface, it’s a lovely sentiment. People should be mindful of the fact that they live privileged lives, and use that awareness to inform their interactions with people who are less privileged.

But it never goes that deep. It stops at “be grateful because you have it good.” The new Gratitude encourages insularity – think hard about what you have so that you aren’t thinking about people who don’t have anything. Gratitude is selfish. Being grateful for what you have invites the desire for more – more stuff (more friends, money, recognition) equals more gratitude, right?

This year has been full of horror: while the world was outraged at 12 people killed in attacks on Paris, thousands have died in Nigeria at the hands of Boko Haram. Pakistan is a mess. Syria’s civilian population is fleeing, and many in the United States have insisted they’re not welcome. Here in the United States, Donald Trump has been steadily rising in the polls on a platform of racism, sexism, and xenophobia. Black Americans are being gunned down in the street under laughably thin pretexts, with no consequences to the shooters, despite the fact that those gunned down are unarmed.

Why aren’t you angry? Why aren’t you beside yourself with rage? Because you’re grateful. You’re looking at your pile of Christmas presents and thinking “I’m so grateful.” Maybe you volunteered at a shelter or a soup kitchen as part of your holiday celebrations. Were you angry then?

I’m not saying that you should spend all your time with your teeth gritted and the veins standing out in your neck. I’m not even saying that you shouldn’t be grateful for the good things in your life. I’m just saying that it should never stop there. Feel good about what’s good. But feel bad about what’s bad. Feel bad enough to want to spend 2016 working to change it.

Hailing

December 5, 2015 By Lise Quintana in leisure, Uncategorized Tags: I swear this is true, Mother Russia Leave a comment

I had to drive from Bonny Doon to San Francisco. I’ve taken to driving up the coast road, Highway 1, because it’s prettier, and the loveliness of seeing the ocean on the one hand and the fields and woods on the other makes the drive seem shorter.

As I left the house, I paused to send my husband and my mother a Glympse, a way of tracking my progress so that they would know how long I would be.

I was just coming through Half Moon Bay, halfway between Bonny Doon and San Francisco, when I realized that my phone had stopped sending a GPS signal. I turned it back on, and was on the outskirts of town where one of those temporary highway signs sitting next to the road declared in foot-high letters “All Hail Mother Russia.”

A minute later, the Pirate called and without saying “hello,” launched directly into telling me that the Lantos Tunnel on Highway 1 was closed, and that I needed to turn back and go another way.

“How did you know?” I asked him.

“There was a sign on 280 saying that it was closed.”

“Huh. Why wasn’t there a sign on Highway 1? Oh. Wait. There was a sign. Except it didn’t say that Highway 1 was closed. It said ‘All Hail Mother Russia.'”

I turned around and went back through Half Moon Bay, thinking that unhelpful “Mother Russia” was more like a boozy stepmother who flatters herself that people think she’s 20 years younger than she is. Who wears too much makeup and too-tight dresses, who drinks too much and flirts with her daughter’s boyfriends and her son’s friends, and who wouldn’t remember to tell you useful things, like the fact that the tunnel is closed.