[Voices of the MZ Generation Column] Life Is a Game Won by Those Who Are Grateful

Although it is said that you cannot change your life by attitude alone, I often feel that nothing is as important in life as attitude. Especially these days, I often think about how important the attitude of ‘gratitude’ is in life. If you can be grateful for life, no one can beat you. Life is ultimately a game won by those who are grateful.

Of course, objectively speaking, there may be lives more worthy of gratitude and lives less so. Therefore, some people might say that a life that is materially richer or socially more prestigious is a ‘winning’ life. However, on a subjective level, anyone who is grateful for their own life ultimately wins. Humans inevitably feel lack, pain, and dissatisfaction in any situation, but ‘gratitude’ offsets these feelings.

For example, imagine two people who have commuted together to the same workplace every day for the past year. One person lived with daily complaints and dissatisfaction, while the other lived with gratitude for having such a job. If other conditions are similar, the former accumulated unhappy times due to lack of gratitude, while the latter accumulated satisfying times through gratitude.

Of course, sometimes complaints?that is, lack and longing?lead us to better places. A person who does not know how to complain will remain complacent forever and will not move forward to a better place. However, the possibility of a ‘better life’ remains open to those who actively practice gratitude?not those who resign themselves and settle, nor those who passively curl up in their current state. This is because being grateful for the present does not mean complaining about a ‘better life.’

On the contrary, a person who acknowledges the deficiencies in their life but embraces them and ‘actively practices gratitude’ is more likely to ‘improve’ those deficiencies. This is because such a person knows how to be grateful for something in themselves as much as for their current lack, and therefore knows what is valuable, what they are learning, and how positive aspects, that is, strengths, are accumulating within themselves. Considering that the journey to a better life is always directly connected to ‘learning’ in the present, a grateful person is the one who learns the most and is most likely to move toward a better life.

However, a person who only knows dissatisfaction, complaints, lamentations, and grumbling is likely unaware of what is precious and valuable, and what they truly have within themselves. The attitude that there is nothing to learn where they are is what truly prevents them from learning anything. People naturally are drawn to those who know how to be grateful and want to give something to them. They believe that their efforts will be recognized, cherished, and remembered by that person. No one will approach a person who cannot learn and does not know how to be grateful to ‘give’ something.

According to one study, the attitude and words of ‘gratitude’ have such a significant impact on physical and mental health that this attitude alone can be comparable to the effects of exercise or meditation. Life is a game won by those who are grateful. While others struggle with comparisons to others and relative deprivation, the grateful person lives a satisfying life. No one can beat them.

Jung Ji-woo, Cultural Critic