‘Light in the darkness’: The transformative power of giving thanks

Episode transcript

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Harry Bruinius: … there are so many efforts [by] people to bring light to the world, and certainly that’s what we seek while reporting the news.

Clay Collins: That’s the Monitor’s Harry Bruinius. Gratitude has been called an open door to abundance; it’s been paired with humility as a brace of traits that can bring a life into balance. It’s linked to all manner of well being.

A year ago, Harry wrote about the power of gratitude, specifically about letters of thanks and the sometimes extraordinary sense of connection and uplift they deliver to both senders and recipients.

This is “Why We Wrote This.” I’m Clay Collins. Harry, who’s based in New York, joined the show not long after he wrote that story last Thanksgiving season. Part of this episode is an encore presentation of that show, hosted by Samantha Laine Perfas.

But first, like the best guests at your Thanksgiving table, Harry has come back around – I think joyfully – to talk about gratitude again. Welcome back, Harry.

Bruinius: Hey Clay, thanks for having me back.

Collins: Harry, I wonder if you could remind our listeners a bit about that project a year ago.

Bruinius: Yes. It started off as simply asking our readers to share letters that they had received, you know, letters that expressed thanks-giving or gratitude. And I received some stories that made writing this story such an experience. One of them was of a man who had contacted his birth mother after 40 some years and then they reunited. To have both of them in the story was remarkable, and, you know, just hearing their stories and talking to them both having this emotional experience was very impactful to me as well.

Collins: Reporting that story seemed like a somewhat transformative assignment for you. So, how lasting was the glow and how have you thought about gratitude in your reporting work and in your life since that story ran?

Bruinius: It’s so interesting … I just went back and read that story for the first time, you know, probably since last year and immediately those interviews came rushing back to me and remembering the experience of reporting that story and then making the decision to write a first-person story, which I don’t normally do. Maybe I’ve written two or three for the Monitor in my two decades here.

And it’s interesting; after that, I would say my social media algorithms got wind of this somehow. And I started to get pushed people that would have these “gratitude inventories” that they would do and [who were] suggesting them as ways to feel better. And so these [gratitude inventories] kept popping up, and I kind of developed the habit. And, you know, it’s kind of been a rough year, not just being a journalist, but in general.

Collins: What a nice piece of fruitage for you to have your feed filled with nuggets like that. Um, you know, gratitude for one’s own safety from war, maybe right now, or from the most immediate effects of climate change. It can feel like a kind of smugness, almost. It can even introduce some guilt. Have you seen people wrestle with that?

Bruinius: I have. Um, and I wrestle with it. You know, I think I try to be generous in how I understand people’s expressions of gratitude and also to keep in mind that, you know, expressions of gratitude may not always align with the emotions that are within people and sometimes it can seem a bit disingenuous or insincere to [say], “let’s talk about what we’re grateful for” when there’s so many difficult things happening around you and in the world.

I’m sort of a class-conscious person. You know, I’m from a working class background and I recall going to graduate school where people wore bow ties and I sort of liked to wear Timbs and flannels. And I’m at a spot now where I’m comfortable, and it’s easy to be grateful for everything I have.

And at the same time – you know, is it guilt? Not necessarily, but I remember so much of my life, which was difficult just sometimes putting food on the table when I was young in our household. So that makes it easy. Of course I’m grateful.

But at the same time, you know, not that this either inspires any sort of moments of altruism or anything like that, but it’s sobering to know that I am probably right now among the 99.9 percentile of people that are well off, and if you add that historically to human beings that have lived even moreso. And I think that’s a sobering thought, and yet one that nevertheless makes me feel extraordinarily grateful for everything that I have.

Collins: Harry, you write about some hard topics: book banning and other forms of artistic censorship, curbs on free speech, religious persecution. Last summer you wrote about the fraying of community and connection.

David Brooks pointed out recently in The New York Times that starting out every day with gratitude can help in what he called “brutalizing times.” He called for an “audacity of the heart.” In your reporting, or in reporting that you’ve read, do you see gratitude in some ways being a bulwark against the effects of the really difficult events we see playing out?

Bruinius: I think it’s a very individual response at times, and you know, when you write about the topics that I often write about, there’s not gratitude floating around. And in fact, the mail that I get for a lot of my stories, let’s just say they’re not necessarily expressing gratitude.

I absolutely think that a practice of gratitude or a practice in which you really focus and meditate on the goodness that’s around you does provide that bulwark.

Collins: It sounds like what you described coming into your feed now sort of helps a little with your emotional equilibrium, just that drip, drip of exposure to gratitude as a reminder to yourself.

Bruinius: It’s an interesting story in and of itself. You know, the number of people out there that do these gratitude inventories and that promote them and talk about them and talk about them as a bulwark – you know, a mental health enhancer. And that these have become a part of my feeds, it’s interesting; it’s sort of a positive spin.

We often, I think, talk about all of the negative things of social media, but certainly the algorithms did something well for me, that’s for sure.

Collins: How are you beginning to think about what Monitor stories you’ll look for next as we head into 2024, and what’s the service that you hope they can help provide?

Bruinius: Again, I think as a reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, we’re always looking to find the light that is in the darkness – and we experience a lot of this darkness. I think given the topics that I cover, that’s certainly a challenge on different levels, both as a person and as a reporter to find what’s going right, especially when things seem so overwhelmingly dark at times.

I write a lot about religion and culture, and there are so many efforts of people to bring light to the world, and certainly that’s what we seek while reporting the news.

Collins: Well, thank you, Harry, for coming on again and for your litany of very thoughtful stories. What we’ll hear next is that excerpt from your 2022 Thanksgiving episode.

Bruinius: Thanks so much, Clay, for having me. It was a pleasure.

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Samantha Laine Perfas: Harry, for the story that you wrote on gratitude, you received a bunch of letters. Were there any in particular that stood out to you?

Bruinius: One of the first letters that I received was from Nancy Bourcier in Surprise, Arizona. And she just wanted to share a thank you letter that she had gotten from her new granddaughter-in-law. And she was very excited about, you know, about submitting this letter. But she also kind of casually mentioned that she’s been reading the Monitor for 75 years and that her mother used to read stories from the Monitor to her when she was young. And later on, she also kind of casually said that she had mentioned to her, her son in-law, that I was writing this story on gratitude. And he was surprised because he recognized my byline and said, “Oh, he always writes serious stories.” So my interactions with Nancy became really personal. And so I felt the meaning of the work that I do in a deeper way. And it made me decide to write the story in the first person and share my experiences, along with the letters of gratitude that readers were sharing with me.

Laine Perfas: Did you encounter anything that helps us understand why we don’t express gratitude more often?

Bruinius: I talk to scholars [who] actually study gratitude as a human phenomenon. And one of the scholars I talked to, Amit Kumar at the University of Texas at Austin, asked this question in the midst of research into gratitude that’s been going on for at least 20 years. And, you know, there’s sort of demonstrable effects of expressing gratitude on the body. It kind of activates the parts of our nervous system that bring us down from stress. But Dr. Kumar was asking this question: Why, if gratitude is so good for our bodies and our well-being, why don’t people [share] it more often? He found that people who write letters of gratitude almost feel that they’re going to make the recipient feel embarrassed, or they might come off as being too mushy. But then in this experiment, they also measured what the recipient said. And overwhelmingly there was this disjunction between what people expressing gratitude expected their recipients to feel and what the recipients actually felt. And I almost began to feel there’s a connection between gratitude and being vulnerable. Expressing gratitude is sort of recognizing that you can’t do it on your own. That you’re part of a world in which human connections are so essential.

Laine Perfas: I’m curious in what ways you see gratitude in your own life.

Bruinius: I talked to people [who] had letters of gratitude from first responders. Soldiers in Afghanistan. And in particular, there was a story of a man that I’ve worked with in the past, he responded with a letter that he had written to his birth mother; he had been adopted. And after his adopted parents had passed away, he decided to find his birth mother and he did. And he wrote her this extraordinary letter that kind of left me without words. He just wanted to thank her and say what a great life he had. The generosity of them sharing that letter and the reactions with me, gave me a sense of gratitude, of not only their generosity, but [also] of the privilege to do the work that I do for the Monitor.

Laine Perfas: What do you want your readers, or even our listeners, to walk away with from your story?

Bruinius: I hope our readers can come away with a deeper sense of what gratitude does, not only in the midst of loss and difficulty, but even in our everyday lives. Expressing gratitude for what people are doing not only has an effect on their lives, it has a profound effect on our own lives as well. What other people are doing is important to us, and acknowledging those connections improves our well-being.

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Collins: We’re grateful for our listeners. Happy Thanksgiving. To find a transcript and our show notes, which include links to Harry’s stories, visit CSMonitor.com/WhyWeWroteThis. This episode was hosted by me, Clay Collins, and produced by Mackenzie Farkus. Jingnan Peng is also a producer on this show. The 2022 episode we excerpted was hosted by Samantha Laine Perfas. Our sound engineers were Noel Flatt and Alyssa Britton, with original music by Noel Flatt. Produced by The Christian Science Monitor. Copyright 2023.