Frame and Focus

I am reminded that gratitude is a function of focus.  Do I focus on what I have or what I have lost?  Do I focus on what I have received or what is missing?  For the most part, I don't get to choose what I have or don't have.  I do, however, get to choose where I focus.  Whatever gets my focused attention gets bigger.  What I choose to ignore gets smaller.

What is the difference between the Samaritan leper and the other nine?  Perhaps the other nine simply viewed their healing as the restoration of what was originally theirs.  As a species, we are loss-averse. We are highly sensitive to what has been taken from us.  We are far more sensitive to the threats of loss than we are to the possibilities of gain.

So we are more likely to see our blessings as simple restoration rather than positive addition.  We are more likely to see our blessings as a return to "zero" (the previous status quo) rather than as some positive addition to our lives.  When we see our blessings as restoration, we react with the attitude of entitlement.  Gratitude will not follow.  I think that may describe the responses (or the lack thereof) of the nine Jewish lepers.  They had been given back what was their property at some previous point in time.

It may be that the Samaritan felt no such sense of privileged entitlement.  So he was more likely to experience and express gratitude.  Where we focus makes a difference.  Deficits are not actionable. Deficits can only be grieved.  Assets can lead to action, to growth, to health and happiness.

How we frame our gifts is another factor in grateful living.  Most of us come to our blessings with a "Yes, but..." response.  Yes, that's all well and good that it's a wonderful day, but I have such significant losses and troubles in my life that I can't enjoy the day.  Yes, my life is pretty awesome in a lot of ways right now, but it's not what it was a year ago or five or ten--that time when things were just the way I wanted them to be (we can talk about memory as revisionist history another time).

Again, we are choosing both focus and frame.  If we frame everything in terms of previous losses, nothing will ever be good again.  If we expand our focus to include all the bad things as the borders of a good picture, then the picture becomes dark and sad.  None of this negative focus is written into the fabric of "Objective" experience.  We choose our frame and our focus moment by moment.

Will we make those choices consciously?  Will we choose a positive framework and a constructive focus?  Our happiness hinges in part on such moment by moment choices.  And this is not merely a construct of, for example, white male privilege.  Some of the happiest people I know from around the world are among the most impoverished.  They have learned to choose a positive frame and focus as a means of survival.

One thing that I have learned is that I must carefully choose the "size" of my frame as well as the direction of my focus.  When I am overwhelmed by the struggles of this life (a daily and sometimes hourly occurrence), I practice frame-narrowing.  What is the joy, the meaning, the purpose I can find in what I am doing right at this moment?  When I narrow the frame, I can find the hope I need to go on with the day.

As our AA friends might remind us, I strive to be where my hands are and not somewhere else.  There is plenty of time to reflect on bigger frames of reference when I am in a better frame of mind.  I can choose how big to make the picture and where to put my gaze.

Somehow, our Samaritan colleague in faith made those choices and found himself kneeling in gratitude at Jesus' feet.  I pray for the wisdom to do the same today.