Gratitude: A Path Through Pain to Creative Freedom

Maintaining a grateful attitude is difficult —anyone who’s tried to maintain one knows that’s a huge understatement. It’s difficult even for people who seem to have everything going for them: the super-rich who sail on their yachts yet feel so anxious about their futures that they need medication; the movie stars who go to sleep depressed and wake up even more so; the startup moguls who look in the mirror and see the face of a fraud. So it makes sense that there’s no shortage of astonishment when we encounter people whose lives appear incredibly difficult and yet who possess what seems like infinite gratitude for what they do have. Fred Rivera is one such person.

I’ve known Fred for at least two decades, first as a highly-skilled bass player, then as the author of Raw Man, an award-winning novel based on his traumatic experiences as an infantryman in Vietnam, and as a wise friend and mentor. For as long as we’ve been acquainted, Fred’s been in near-constant pain from injuries he suffered in combat. More recently, he’s had to contend with chronic pain from a serious illness as well. When we had a chance to sit down together and speak about gratitude, he began by telling me, “Gratitude is something I strive for every day.”

Working the Muscles of Gratitude

For many, there’s an assumption that gratitude, or more specifically, being in a state of gratitude, is either something people come by naturally or not at all. And yet, here is Fred saying that he “strives” for gratitude, as if he’s accessing it the same way he learned to play the bass as a kid. I asked him to explain his approach.

“I would say that no matter what I’m going through, I concentrate on the well-known phrase, ‘This too shall pass.’ And because I don't want to manufacture misery for myself and others, I’ve become very conscious of its meaning.”

I asked Fred if there were other examples of concrete behaviors he engages in to promote and maintain his sense of gratitude.

“There’s a practice I’m involved with. It’s a specific 12-step meeting called the Gratitude Group, and all people do there is talk about gratitude. You sit in a circle, and like any 12-step group, there’s someone facilitating the meeting. People just share and talk about what they’re grateful for and why they’re grateful.”

I was curious if Fred saw a particular benefit in talking through these ideas in a group setting—rather than just mulling them over privately, and if any themes came up more often than others.

“I think that in order to be grateful, you have to get out of yourself. That’s where the group comes into play. I think that’s something that comes up a lot. You need to stop worrying about all of the things that are going wrong, or supposedly wrong, in your life and spend more energy on the positive things. There are always more positives than negatives. For example, I have a routine for the times I experience extreme back pain. I lie down and take a mental inventory of my entire body, from my toes all the way up to my head. I’ll wiggle a toe, and I’ll actually speak to myself. I’ll say, ‘Are you healthy?’ I’ll answer, ‘Yes, you’re healthy. Then go on and send your love and your comfort to your back that’s feeling pain.’”

I wondered if this strange sort of conversation with one’s body parts actually helped.

“These conversations are not only helpful, but they are also key. I do a lot of this sort of conversing because I’m challenged so often and with so much horrendous physical pain. When I began to examine the different kinds of pain: emotional, spiritual, psychological—I came to the somewhat surprising understanding that physical pain is the easiest pain to live with. Physical pain is more forgiving. Right now, for example, I’m walking around. I feel great, just incredible. Two days ago, I was laid out flat on my back in pain. But that no longer matters because it’s not lingering. Emotional pain is much harder to control because it’s often so persistent. I can control the physical pain to a large degree with my sense of gratitude.”

Gratitude as a Creative Act

Image: John Coltrane, facts.net

Fred and I began to discuss the relationship of gratitude to creativity. I asked him if he saw his focus on gratitude as part of a creative process.

“That fits perfectly into what I was saying,” he said. “Being grateful is like being in a state of grace. When we create, write songs, come up with bass parts, or whatever we’re doing, we feel most fulfilled in those moments.”

Fred doesn’t simply believe that gratitude can be learned and practiced. He knows it. He also knows that gratitude and creativity are, in some ways, almost synonymous. And just before he drove away, Fred said something that moved me for its simple truth.

“Gratitude is a vehicle for putting yourself in a state of belonging with the world. When your gratitude for life is highest, you can see the world in all its enormity, without ever diminishing yourself in the process.”

For me, Fred’s statement is one of those things you hear, but rather than diminishing with time, it becomes clearer and more real. When you simultaneously relate to your experience of the physical world and the dreamlike imaginative state within yourself, you become fully alive to your creativity. You are, as Fred put it, “in a state of belonging with the world.”

I liken it to the jazz saxophone great John Coltrane. When he was soloing, it was as if he were in a quasi-dream state. But at the same moment, he remained hyper-aware of what was happening around him—particularly what was happening with the other players in the rhythm section. He needed to hear them and respond to them while at the same time “listening” and responding to the imaginative impulses in his own mind. It all took place in that fluid connection between the inner imagination and the outer world.

In some sense, gratitude is akin to music-making, particularly improvised music. The idea of releasing your body from physical constraints may sound fantastical. However, many musicians and artists have testified to the experience of “traveling” beyond their bodies' limitations. The idea of going elsewhere is not an uncommon one among most artists. 

It is a blending, an inhabiting of sorts, of two different worlds: two differing states of mind. Both are comprised of gratitude. It’s as if new walls are created, a new sky was hanging above, a new feeling for time, speed, and distance are parts of a spiritual world that had—if only for the moment—fused with the normal, physical world. Here, all possibilities expand. Our sense of what we formerly considered “reality” becomes unbounded by habit, cultural norms, and everyday sloth-mindedness.

Gratitude, or as Fred put it, gaining a sense of “belonging in the world,” allows your mind to become like a porous wall—or better yet, no wall at all—between these two supposed opposites.

Looking for some good ways to make this happen for yourself? Make these five ideas (or your own!) part of each day.

1. Shut off your cell phone at regular intervals each day. (Not just the ringer. The phone itself

2. Take a walk with a friend with just one rule in mind: No talking about negative things.

3. Sit down and write a love note. (Parent, child, sibling, spouse, friend)

4. Wake up in the morning and thank God for giving you a new day, a new canvas on which to paint.

5. Marvel at three things every afternoon. (Your hands, the sky, the skin of a grapefruit, the branches of a tree — it needn’t be a lovely tree. A regular one will do!