Gratitude is a feeling of thankfulness and appreciation for the good in your life, including the kindness, help, and generosity you receive from others. It means recognizing both what you value and how others have contributed to it.

Here is a fable on gratitude attributed to Aesop:

Two travelers, exhausted by the midday heat, rested beneath a broad, leafy tree.
“How useless this tree is,” one said. “It produces no fruit.”
The tree replied, “You are enjoying my shade at this very moment, yet you call me useless.”

The lesson: You can overlook the very things that are quietly sustaining you.

Dr. Robert Emmons, perhaps the world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude, argues that gratitude has two key components, which he describes in a Greater Good essay, “Why Gratitude Is Good.”

“First,” he writes, “it’s an affirmation of goodness. You affirm that there are good things in the world, gifts and benefits you’ve received.”

In the second part of gratitude, he explains, “you recognize that the sources of this goodness are outside of yourself.

A commonly retold Zen story:

A man fleeing a tiger climbed over the edge of a cliff and clung to a vine. Below him, more danger waited.
As he hung there, he noticed a ripe strawberry growing nearby. He picked it and tasted its sweetness.

The lesson: Gratitude does not require pretending that danger or suffering is absent. It can mean noticing something good even while life remains uncertain.

You acknowledge that other people—or even higher powers—gave you many gifts, big and small, to help you achieve the goodness in your life.

Note:  Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D., is the world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude. He is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, and the founding editor-in-chief of The Journal of Positive Psychology.

Source:  What Is Gratitude?, The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/topic/gratitude/definition