For the atheists of Tildes, do you feel the need to show gratitude for comforts of your life and how do you do it?
So I was raised in a religious household with prayer and such but due to things like a dysfunctional family where some members used religion in a very unhealthy way, combined with distrust I have developed over the years of any sort of authority (and some of the teachings that i disagreed with), I just couldn't fully reconcile being part of the religion I was raised in and left.
However, despite the complicated relationship I have with God (I am left unsure as to whether He exists and if He is truly loving), it has proven a useful outlet for my gratitude for life.
I see unhoused people around me, people struggling with drug addiction, I am friends with a nurse who works in a psych ward and they sometimes text me the saddest stories. combine that with the fact that I was laid off for 6 month during the tech layoff season (I was over the moon when I finally landed a job), I have a lot of gratitude for the fact that I have a job in something I am passionate about, can afford my lifestyle and and a roof over my head. basically the necessities.
And I find I have a need to direct this gratitude somewhere and the idea of God proves useful in these cases.
For people who don't believe in God, do you feel a need to express gratitude at anything and if so, how do you do it?
This is closest to my feeling - the idea of experiencing or expressing gratitude for things that I perceive as happenstance just doesn't really occur to me. I'll be happy that those things happened, of course, but not grateful.
A lot of things aren't happenstance, of course, and in those cases I'll absolutely express my gratitude to those responsible if I can, or at least acknowledge the good that's been done and try to emulate it if I can't - that's especially true when it comes to broader acts where someone has indirectly improved my life by working for the good of society as a whole.
The corollary to this is that my much larger struggle is with anger. I'm not grateful that I happen to be housed and fed, I'm incandescent with rage that so many others aren't, because those issues also generally don't come down to happenstance - they're the direct and indirect outcomes of greedy, callous people's actions. I've never liked that the word "privilege", a word that connotes special and unusual treatment, has become the chosen term to describe "things that everyone should have but some don't".
I know that carrying this much anger isn't healthy. It's something I work on, and probably will always be working on. I don't judge anyone else for trying to reframe things through a more positive lens for the benefit of their own mental health. But I'm fairly confident that I'll always feel this level of anger is justified - moving forward is a question of channeling it into positive change, not one of convincing myself that things are actually OK after all.
So with all that said, if it did occur to me to feel grateful for something that benefitted me seemingly at random, the wider implications would be... very bad. If I believed there were any entity with enough control of our lives to be worthy of gratitude, control over the things that truly can't be attributed to the actions of people, I'd be so overwhelmingly upset by their treatment of others that I don't think I'd be able to go on. Feeling gratitude towards them would feel like being grateful to a mob boss for not burning down my business when they burned down the one across the street.
One thing that may help you is the recognition that the world doesn't have the problems it does because of particularly greedy, callous people. Everyone has the capacity to be greedy and callous.
Most people, if they were billionaires and politicians running the world, would behave in the same way billionaires and politicians today do. There's no one group of people that tend to be more virtuous that would do a better job.
That's because the systems in place are the root cause of all of that oppression and pain, not the specific people involved. Countless times throughout history, revolutions were fought and won by harnessing the righteous anger of the oppressed, and usually, the end result is a different set of people get to do the oppressing.
Sometimes we come up with a less oppressive system, but that has little to do with the specific people in charge, and more to do with certain ideas coming to fruition and certain technologies being developed.
Online I often see the sentiment that boils down to "if only we could kill the right people we'd live in utopia". That's not really how the world works though. Actual, workable ideas for how systems function as an alternative to the status quo is the only way things really improve.
So maybe you could use that idea the next time you're feeling rage towards particular people, and instead channel that frustration to the systems that allow them to do what's making you upset, and examine why the system functions that way?
This is a good take and I appreciate it, although I will say it's unfortunately fairly close to where I was coming from already. My thinking is less "remove the oppressor and everything will be fine" and more "we, people as a whole, are creating and perpetuating the systems that harm us all".
It's not so much specific people being the problem that I struggle with, it's that by and large people are the problem: for all the unavoidable curveballs the universe at large throws our way, the majority of actual day to day harm I see is our own damn fault as a species. Saying "people's greedy, callous actions" probably would've captured that nuance of meaning better than "greedy, callous people's actions", now that I read it again.
I know that "if people would just..." is a pointless line of thinking because people, by and large, are not going to "just...". But the gap from where we are to where we totally feasibly could be will always be painful to think about.
I understand what you're saying but to me, the "respect and understanding" of your privileges is the gratitude. It doesn't have to directed at anything or anyone, least of all the systems of inequality that create them. The way I see it, the alternative to being grateful for one's privileges is to feel entitled to them. In this sense, a privileged person who isnt grateful is one who has no reasons to change the system to be more equitable for others.
That is one alternative. The other alternative is that it is just not acknowledged.
As an example, when I do not have a stuffy nose, I do not feel grateful for the ability to breathe. It is unconscious. It is just part of my existence.
When I have a stuffy nose, I probably acknowledge temporarily that a working nasal cavity is something that I should be grateful for.
That does not mean that I feel entitled to comfortable breathing. It has never occurred to me until typing this that it is a thing that I could conceptually even feel entitled to.
That's something I would still consider "entitlement." I'll call it "passive entitlement" for the sake of argument. Being "passively entitled" to a non-runny nose is fine, but if you're "passively entitled" to having some privilege granted to you by an unjust system, it's a different thing.
At the end of the day, it's semantics, though, and you might consider the way I'm defining entitlement and gratitude to be an overreach which I'd understand.
It's funny you mentioned runny noses because I used to have nasal issues and not having a blocked nose is something I think about occasionally as something I'm grateful about, lol.
It's interesting that you mentioned that, because I almost said in my post above that I only think of gratitude applying when there's a target for it. I imagine this is at least partially going to come down to differing understandings of the word, the concept/emotion/thought pattern, and how the two interact - but for me at least I absolutely understand it through the lens of gratitude specifically being directed to a source.
[Edit] Thinking a bit further, this also speaks to what I said about not liking the way the word "privilege" is used. To me, absence of gratitude doesn't inherently suggest entitlement, but y'know what? I do feel entitled to a roof over my head. I do feel entitled to food to eat. I do feel entitled to fair, equitable treatment from others. I think everyone is entitled to those things, and to me it's more important - perhaps even more morally right - to frame it in a way that suggests the people who don't have those things have every right to force the issue if necessary.
Noise-ish:
I really wish the meaning of entitlement hadn’t been a casualty of 20th century US politics.
Entitlement means “a right to benefits specified especially by law or contract.” So when certain politicians complain about “entitlement spending,” they’re complaining about spending on benefits people have a right to under particular laws.
An “entitled child” is a child that has a right to a particular benefit under contract or law, not a spoiled or ungrateful child.
Someone may be grateful or ungrateful for a thing to which they’re entitled because gratitude and entitlement aren’t antonyms.
#ReclaimEntitlement
I think the word entitled here is used ironically. It doesn't quite mean ungrateful in that usage.
Calling someone entitled as an insult implies that they believe they're entitled something that they're not. If a kid screams at his parents because they didn't buy him a Mercedes like he wanted, you're calling him entitled ironically.
He's not actually entitled to a Mercedes, but he's acting like he is. So you'd be calling him entitled in the same way you'd call someone who just did something incredibly stupid "genius".
That's not quite the same thing as ungrateful though. In the scenario above, the kid didn't get anything. He doesn't have anything in particular to feel grateful for, he just didn't get the thing that he (falsely) believed he was entitled to.
I think that the way I've framed it focuses on the people who do have those things and their duty to equality which begins with the acknowledgement I'm calling gratitude. Both are necessary.
That's fair - reading back my edit it maybe sounds a bit more pointed than I meant it, and I do get the impression we're coming from a similar place at the ethical core of the question. I just struggle to conceptualise the "gratitude" viewpoint in a way that doesn't ultimately boil down to an implied "at least it's not me" when looking at the person worse off. I'm not suggesting that's your view, at all, just that I personally can't work it through in a way that avoids leading there.
I could simply leave this comment as a vote, but I feel the need to comment:
This is exactly it. I feel damn lucky to be in the position I'm in in my life right now, but recognize that a large part of it is simply due to bring a straight white dude.
Privilege is why I was hired at the place I started my career, because while the person who hired me (who is now a good friend of mine) had lots of choices, they likely chose me because we're both straight white guys who grew up in similar situations, had similar interests and hobbies, etc. It gave me that in I needed, especially as a consistent underachiever throughout my life and allowed me to build what I have now.
On the flip side, I do make a somewhat conscious effort to feel gratitude for what humanity before me has wrought. Indoor plumbing is the most common where I do think, damn, I can't believe I have running water freely available at all times. The other day it was using my toaster.
I'm an engineer at heart so I regularly feel wonder, awe, and gratitude to the amount of design and engineering that have gone into giving me such a comfortable life.
I don't feel gratitude towards anything in particular, however I feel an extreme sense of appreciation and thankfulness towards a number of things that truly make me remarkably lucky. Not just with all the factors that result in me having leisure time online, but also within the society I live in.
If life is a giant lottery where only the winning tickets are visible, I didn't just win another ticket or a minor prizes, I won one of the grand prizes, maybe not a billion dollar jackpot, but we're up there.
That leaves me feeling extremely grateful for things that just happen to be, not because of anyone's conscious choice, countless butterfly-effects and just general randomness.
Here's where I'd love to hear more about the following:
Can't I be extremely grateful and show gratitude in general, can't I acknowledge the extreme privilege, both personal and systemic I haven't asked for, but that I truly truly benefit greatly from?
Why would that necessitate feeling grateful for the systemic issues that need to be fixed?
Wouldn't not being grateful and acknowledging this privilege be taking credit for benefits and circumstances I've done nothing to earn or deserve?
Are we just calling this, whatever it is, appreciation (?) different things, or are the actual thoughts and feelings different?
I feel extremely, extremely grateful I was born in exactly the loving, nurturing, resourceful, open-minded, talented family I was.
There's no higher power or god involved, just appreciation of random undirected luck that's benefitted me much more than almost anyone I'll ever interact with have benefitted from their random circumstances.
I wouldn't describe it as a need to express gratitude, but I do try to take time to be grateful for what I have, to no one in particular. I guess it might seem strange without having someone to be grateful to, but for me it's more about just being appreciative. I am in many ways a very fortunate person and taking time to express gratitude helps me keep perspective.
I just commented saying this but my gratitude goes towards the humans that came before me. Many, many people worked very, very hard to make my life so comfortable, and for that, I am deeply grateful.
I'm not big on gratitude work because it feels fake to me, so much of life is hard so much of the time, I acknowledge I've got privilege but I dislike the "be grateful once a day" sort of thing that some folks do. I also know that much of the difference between me and someone with addiction or sleeping on the street is just chance. So who should I thank for it.
When I do feel gratitude I release it, sort of like a prayer, but either directed at no one, or intentionally directed at a different deity. I don't really believe in them, I wish I did, but idk, you never know if Hermes or Ganesh is out there. It's just handy to be able to invoke a concept in my head and since no other structure of belief has "stuck" with me, it's whatever feels fine at the time
ETA: Mulling this over, the reason I toss my thoughts and shit at Hekate or Nyx or whomever is in part because I do wish I had faith in something but also because the believers of those gods haven't hurt me and also because I need something to fill in the "thank God" verbal habit with. I don't really think I'm "thanking" them for anything. I'm just reverting to the way I know how to express relief, usually.
I don't think I really think of it as gratitude per se, but I do definitely think a lot about how much better I have it than many other people through no fault of my own. The circumstances of my birth and the ways my life has gone haven't been exclusively positive, but there's been far more good than bad. Not everyone has the privileges I do.
The biggest difference between this and feeling gratitude towards God (I was also raised Christian, though I no longer am) is that it pushes me to take a strong stance against these injustices. I think just giving thanks to God is a very passive way to respond to the fact that I'm not homeless or stuck with abusive parents or getting bombed to death with everyone I love in Gaza. It's not God who's doing those things to others, it's us people, and as someone who's so much better off than most, I should use what power I have to fight to fix the systems that allow or incentivize those things. I should work to help those who were not as lucky as me.
Assuming I understand your question, it is always weird to me that people want to give thanks and gratitude towards a mystical being in the sky instead of all the people who helped them get where they are.
I grew up in the church, my father is a retired minister and my parents are still religious. It sounds like we had similar childhoods but my parents were more supportive. That's a roll of the genetic dice and nothing to do with God, but I understand most people struggle to accept that randomness.
Any time I reflect on my current situation, I am grateful for the great childhood I had, the amazing teachers I experienced, the wonderful managers and leaders I was able to learn from and my wife who is endlessly supportive. These people actually all helped me get where I am.
If you have those people in your life, I personally find directing gratitude towards them more rewarding. Letting someone know they have had a positive impact on your growth and development is almost always received positively in my experience. God apparently expects that praise, which yeah, no thanks.
I think gratitude is one of the most important beliefs one can cultivate, in the sense that like @rosco said, it helps you enjoy everything good so much more when you can appreciate it genuinely, and that is a skill that requires practice like any other.
I add the caveat that it has to be open-eyed gratitude, with full acknowledgement of the suck parts of life as well. I've seen far too much of the pathological case "well, someone somewhere else has it worse, so I can't complain" to think otherwise.
I try to be mindful of the things that I have that give me comfort, and mindful of the fact that it's not all because of the work I've done.
I owe a lot to my parents and upbringing, but trying to parse that can be maddening. Instead, I try to note those times when things are good and let that feeling wash over me so that I can appreciate the moment.
If something has been very obviously brought to me by someone else (like my partner bringing me a cup of coffee), I try to be sincere when I thank them.
Sometimes the decisions I make truly do influence the outcome, and I try to recognize those moments, too. It is worthwhile to be kind to yourself.
I was raised in Secular Humanistic Judaism, which is more than just Judaism with YHVH sanded off. It relies on people, not the supernatural, to solve problems. Humanistic Judaism maintains community rituals and Jewish teaching, but as celebrations rooted in history and culture rather than faith. Philosophically, it encourages a sense of gratitude to other people, living and dead, who brought about survival and improvement in the human condition, as well as the family, friends, and communities that support us.
However, this gratitude isn't limited to passive acknowledgement. We're obligated to manifest gratitude through learning, ethical behavior, and working for equality, justice, freedom, dignity, happiness, and well-being. We pay back our forebears and forward to children.
The place I live in is too small to support an active SHJ temple; I usually hang with the Unitarians and social justice/political groups when I need my active gratitude fix. Otherwise, time in nature, being grateful that I live to experience the world through my human senses and intellect.
I learned a new thing about Jewish culture today! Thank you for that.
One of the hardest things for me about being formerly Catholic is not having the community itself or its rituals to work from. I feel so disconnected from, well, everything. This is a very cool intentional way of maintaining the community without the deity.
I’m a chronically depressed man with a dead-end job and not enough money to ever buy a house. I have no friends, no education, and no life prospects…
…but despite a developing drinking problem..I’m in okay physical health. I live in a safe country, and in a nice city with a decent place to stay (whilst I can afford it). My mental health is waning, but despite all the lows I do feel grateful for time I’ve had here on Earth.
I understand how lucky I am to even be right here, right now - able to be me, aware of my limitations and foibles, and still be able to experience this relatively privileged life.
I’m grateful to the world, to the unknown. I just feel it, that’s all I can do.
This might be a bit too direct, apologies if it is, but why does it need to be directed to (a) god? My thinking here is that if there is a higher deity involved it also means you have been privileged by that deity over other people. Which, to me, doesn't sound right. That doesn't mean that you can't be grateful for what you have, of course you can! I am grateful for a lot of things, but more that I am aware of the luck and circumstances that brought me there.
As far as aiming that energy somewhere, I try to make it, so more people will have better (equal) opportunities through the way I vote (not just on parties that benefit me, but also those who benefit others), donating to causes I can get behind and generally trying to help people where I can.
There are two things this makes me think of.
The first is that being grateful can make you appreciate things so much more, so it's definitely a habit to keep up.
Sometimes that can be in the moment - like appreciating a good meal with a friend while you're actually eating the meal. "Mmm, oh man, did you try the asparagus?!? I can't even imagine how they got it to taste this way..." I love eating with my best friend because it's usually just one big love fest for everything we enjoy about the meal. It happens with activities too. When my friend Samuel and I go biking or swimming, we'll talk about how amazing it is and how lucky we are to be doing it and living in a place that allows it. It does make me appreciate it all the more.
And then there is delayed gratitude - where you reflect on it in hindsight. My partner and I end each night with "gratitudes". Mostly it's things we appreciate the other person did - like "I'm grateful you saw I was having a bad day and made us an amazing lunch! That made we feel understood and supported". But sometimes it's environmental like "I'm so grateful it was sunny and warm out, I need a bit fo that in the winter!" It brings small acts into focus and makes you focus on the positive.
The last is what I would call human reflectance, where I think about what I'm grateful for on a life/earth level. My health, where I live, what I get to do in life. I often get these when I'm either feeling a bit melancholy or reflective, usually when I'm having a transition or sad moment in life. They buffer me against feeling too sad and do make me really appreciate everything I have. The other time is whenever I get high. I only smoke pot once every few months, but for the past decade all I really do when I get high is marvel at how my life turned out. I can't really believe anything that has happened and it makes me so grateful for what I have. It's weird because it doesn't feel real when I'm high, a bit like The Talking Heads song - Once in a Lifetime
Together, these different appreciations or gratitudes keep me feeling positive and well, grateful, for the life I've been able to cobble together.
The other thought I have is that often in religion people are taught that any negative outcome they experience is the result of their own failure and any positive outcome is the result of God. When people say "who should really get the credit is God" or "I just want to thank God" or "God has done this for us", they are attributing all the results of their or their communities hard work to God. And while no one should be narcissistic and go full "I did all this!", I think folks - particularly previously religious folks, should get to bathe in their successes as much as they wallow in their failures. So every now and then remember to be grateful to yourself. I do it be thanking my past self and making a note to hook up my future self.
In any case, you sound like an incredibly thoughtful and grateful person. Just remember to point some of those good vibes at yourself!
I am a second-generation atheist (i.e., raised without any religion). I don't feel any moral obligation to express gratitude about anything — except my loved ones, who of course deserve to know that I don't take them for granted.
That being said, it's my natural tendency to feel gratitude for mundane things. My early childhood (starting when I was a toddler) was racked with a series of unrelated traumatic events and upheaval. I think this affected my brain development, causing me to calibrate my general life expectations pessimistically. As a consequence, whenever I experience a long-ish period where nothing noteworthy happens (which is actually the norm at this stage in my life), I feel constantly astonished at my good luck.
But the biggest things that induce my gratitude are the ones that make me feel a deep, intrinsic connection to the universe — things that make me feel alive and biological. I feel a deeply existential sense of belonging when I learn about the natural sciences, especially cell biology for some reason; videos like this are practically euphoria-inducing because I imagine all these sorts of processes happening in my body and the bodies of all lifeforms, and I imagine the same chemicals constantly moving between us as we consume and respire. I get the same feeling when I spend time in natural settings, where I can really feel my senses respond to the environment and observe other lifeforms responding to the same environment; it feels like I am where I'm meant to be, connected to all things by the strange, interrelated currents and eddies of our evolutionary ancestry.
I very rarely express these feelings to anyone. I try to focus on immersing myself in the feelings themselves and just enjoy them without self-consciousness.
I do feel greatful for the people in my life that I support and that support me. Those I share laughter with and those I share the inevitable burdens of life with. I don't remind people of their importance to me as much as I should. But, on occasion I think it's important to recognize those around us whom we are grateful toward. It is always nice to hear!
I don't feel gratitude for my material wealth, I feel lucky for being born at a time and place where my basic needs are largely fulfilled. It is not something to be grateful toward someone for IMO.
I'm happy with where my life is right now. I can appreciate that, while I have generally worked hard and made good choices, a huge part of that is privilege and general good luck.
That being said, even though I'm thankful in the general sense, I'm not really feeling like there's a paticular entity that I should be personally thanking for this.
I try and distribute food, maybe a few hundred bucks worth of pizza, wings and soda, to the homeless, whenever seems opportune.
When it gets to gratitude, I think it's something I like to take my time to experience, as a way of living in the moment. Though, I don't think it requires believing in a deity for that. I'd rather share it with people whom I grateful to be with, or share gratefulness of experience with them when it is appropriate.
I don't think material wealth is something to be grateful for in itself - it is the experience that comes with it, if you ask me. As well as using that room to help those who do not have that luxury.
Every thing that ever happened to you, good or bad, is the result of a series of happy accidents and coincidences. I struggle to understand why being grateful to an abstract… force (god, whatever) that supposedly provides things to me. Why me? Why not everyone? And I think it's very easy to the gratitude to become arrogance, an “I deserve it” attitude based on merits never (never) goes by itself, there's always a lucky component on any story.
I try to stay humble and be aware of my little comforts and the people who helped me achieve them and those who, for whatever reason, can't have them. Even feel guilty sometimes when faced with (what I consider) little luxuries, even trying to avoid as much as I can to be seen as a snob.
I've found keeping a gratitude journal helpful when life feels hard. It has nothing to do with directing gratitude at anyone, it has to do with making myself realize that despite difficulties, life can be good. One of the Dali Lama books talks about westerners being far less happy than folks in places where they have less.
I also find myself constantly surprised by the kindness others show to me, especially strangers. I grew up in a really manipulative setting, so I tend to assume that's what I'll get from people. This means I do thank/praise folks as appropriate when they're helpful or especially kind to me. For example, when I call support because there was some kind of problem I'm thankful and kind to the person on the other end of the line - it's not their fault something went wrong, they're trying to help. They're a human doing a job I wouldn't want to do.
Same. I did a practice for a while where I wrote down three things I was grateful for every day. Whoever I learned that from explained, it didn't need to be anything "big" or something, just try to not be repetitive and think of something new every day. Some days I could be grateful for my coworkers, or my snuggly dog, or for spring rain, or for a friend who visited, or for a delicious meal, or for my mother, or for my regular morning cup of coffee. It just helped me consider how many things I can appreciate in my day to day life. I don't need to thank a god or any person in particular, I can just take a moment to be grateful for what I have, no matter how small.
Yeah. I'm more atheist than agnostic but at the end of the day, despite the fact that it has no sentience, I'll still rub my dashboard after a long drive. I thank the path for being there, thank the workers who built the path, and hope for future maintainers of said path.
There's isn't an order or any higher power that compels such actions but they're my actions. As long as you recognize that people do actions, it really doesn't matter. You can appreciate a sturdy roof in the rain. You can verbally thank your insulation for being in your walls, doesn't hurt anyone and, having slept in an uninsulated shipping container for a little while, I try to remember that I have plenty to be grateful for.
As someone raised religious and became an atheist after multiple decades in the faith, so, quite long indoctrinated with the idea of gratitude having a target (God), as an 'agnostic atheist' at this point, I see it less as a "directional thanking" that needs a target, and more just that it's okay to realize "i'm glad X, Y, or Z happened, and i'm glad that i'm currently in X, Y, or Z state of being right now".
I think it's kind of an unnecessary conflating or attachment of two things- I can be glad about X without any necessary additional need to "thank a specific person, thing, or force" for its occurrence. I think one can be "grateful" without having to assign that to anything in particular. Of course, if there is some particular person that helped something happen, then of course, directional thanking is a great thing! This can even include very indirect gratitude- like thanking the workers, groups, and humanity involved in the process of providing me with an end product like food, tea, or coffee. And I think it's beneficial as a personal 'ritual' or meditative practice to have that deep of a connection with even what we see as mundane "products"
To me, it just describes a general "realization that I am fortunate" in some way, big or small. Call that thanking luck or thanking the universe or thanking circumstances if you must, but after a long time I've come to separate the pieces of all this out in my head and can feel that "realization of fortune" or "acknowledgement of some level of privilege (or absence of negative circumstances)" as its own feeling, separate from needing to point it anywhere. Part of it just comes down to language too, though, because one could reframe that as "thanking all the people, places, or things in my life that have led me to this point, or led to this event occurring".
I feel like a rambling broken record a bit, but yeah I totally understand the strong urge to direct what we often refer to as "gratitude" somewhere specific, but I have ultimately found that it's unnecessary, and the only real "directional thanking" that makes sense to me is when some person, group or such does something or has done something that I can specifically thank them for (whether people close to me, or more indirect, like workers that have picked the produce that I buy and eat)
In conclusion, many "tools", personal practices, and such that have long been monopolized by religion are used and can be useful outside a religious context- to me personally, there is no reason we must think of these, such as gratitude, as a religious act in any way.
Exactly! It is possible to appreciate good fortune without thanking anything for it. And when something is due only to luck, I think it is important to recognize that, rather than attributing it to a higher power.
There's a meme - or webcomic or something I can't recall - about a person coming out of a long open surgery, nearly dying, but making a recovery nonetheless. "Thank the Lord for saving our child!" says the family. Meanwhile the surgeon stands there: ಠ_ಠ
I believe it's important to recognize which things are circumstance, and do appreciate that, but also recognize which things aren't circumstance. Those things are caused by individuals or systems with intent, so you should express gratitude toward those individuals.
It also helps direct the negative emotions when things are difficult. A shitty situation need not be "God testing you" or "the devil's work". To improve the situation, it's important to recognize which things can be controlled and which things are real enemies or adversaries against which you can defend.
Thank the people who contributed to being where you are now. It wasn't all you, generally. It's the same reason people praise God for what they have, they believe he helped as much as their friends and family, it's no different you just have one (or more) less entitiy to thank.
For random events I'm grateful the odds worked in my favor but I'm not about to drop to my knees before probability and thank it for working in my favor.
It might be the remnants of my Catholicism, but yeah. Sometimes I thank the universe in general. I'm fully aware that no one's listening, but it makes my brain feel happy, and life's too short to not do a few irrational things that keep my brain at ease.
Yes and no.
I feel the need to thank people and express how much I appreciate them for what they do and how it affects me every day, in ways they may not think about. Not just, "Thanks for holding the door," but, "Thanks for being in my life so I can text someone when some weird shit happens that only applies to our relationship."
I don't feel the need to be grateful to anything beyond that. Even if God exists, he gave humans free will, so I should still be grateful to the people who came before me and the ones who are here now. It's also my self imposed responsibility to help the next generation as much as I can.
It's not out of any desire to express something, it's just a part of my personality. I burned it into myself by virtue of wanting people to know how much they meant to me in my darkest days. So, I tell people I love them as often as I can and hope it means something.
Sure, in some pretty simple ways. I try to express gratitude through seizing upon opportunities, to enhance, cultivate, share, etc the various things which I feel bring me joy or contribute nicely to stuff. It's hard to talk about outside a specific example, because there is no ritual I do nor a saying I use. I just try to keep my self interest/intuition tuned toward looking for those opportunities, and put aside what i consider petty/irrelevant/etc. Most days, I wake up, and while I stretch and meditate I take time to think about what I am most thankful for. Not because I owe anything to anything, nor fear anything's disappearance, but because it sets me up to keep looking in the way I wish to do.
I don't believe in anything beyond the realm of us mortal folk but I do have a kind of spiritualism in my framework for dealing with the world. A very basic sort of idea that there is a "spirit", a self that can be cultivated and changed for various reasons and in various ways. There is a sort of person I like to be, so I work toward being that. The idea there is nothing after I die doesn't bother me, rather it makes the present and the various things that happen more meaningful. It's all there is. So when something happens that is particularly fortunate, I take some time to be grateful for it simply because it could have gone differently.