Here is the second point I am trying to make in this chapter: If we want to find
happiness, let's stop thinking about gratitude or ingratitude and give for the inner joy of
giving.
Parents have been tearing their hair about the ingratitude of children for ten thousand
years. Even Shakespeare's King Lear cried out: "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
to have a thankless child!"
But why should children be thankful-unless we train them to be? Ingratitude is natural-
like weeds. Gratitude is like a rose. It has to be fed and watered and cultivated and
loved and protected.
If our children are ungrateful, who is to blame? Maybe we are. If we have never taught
them to express gratitude to others, how can we expect them to be grateful to us?
I know a man in Chicago who has cause to complain of the ingratitude of his stepsons.
He slaved in a box factory, seldom earning more than forty dollars a week. He married a
widow, and she persuaded him to borrow money and send her two grown sons to
college. Out of his salary of forty dollars a week, he had to pay for food, rent, fuel,
clothes, and also for the payments on his notes. He did this for four years, working like a
coolie, and never complaining.
Did he get any thanks? No; his wife took it all for granted- and so did her sons. They
never imagined that they owed their stepfather anything-not even thanks!
Who was to blame? The boys? Yes; but the mother was even more to blame. She
thought it was a shame to burden their young lives with "a sense of obligation". She
didn't want her sons to "start out under debt". So she never dreamed of saying: "What a
prince your stepfather is to help you through college!" Instead, she took the attitude:
"Oh, that's the least he can do."
She thought she was sparing her sons, but in reality, she was sending them out into life
with the dangerous idea that the world owed them a living. And it was a dangerous idea-
for one of those sons tried to "borrow" from an employer, and ended up in jail!
We must remember that our children are very much what we make them. For example,
my mother's sister-Viola Alexander, of 144 West Minnehala Parkway, Minneapolis -is a
shining example of a woman who has never had cause to complain about the
"ingratitude" of children. When I was a boy, Aunt Viola took her own mother into her
home to love and take care of; and she did the same thing for her husband's mother. I
can still close my eyes and see those two old ladies sitting before the fire in Aunt Viola's
farmhouse. Were they any "trouble" to Aunt Viola? Oh, often, I suppose. But you would
never have guessed it from her attitude. She loved those old ladies-so she pampered
them, and spoiled them, and made them feel at home. In addition, Aunt Viola had six
children of her own; but it never occurred to her that she was doing anything especially
noble, or deserved any halos for taking these old ladies into her home. To her, it was the
natural thing, the right thing, the thing she wanted to do.
Where is Aunt Viola today? Well, she has now been a widow for twenty-odd years, and
she has five grown-up children- five separate households-all clamouring to share her,
and to have her come and live in their homes! Her children adore her; they never get
enough of her. Out of "gratitude"? Nonsense! It is love-sheer love. Those children
breathed in warmth and radiant human-kindness all during their childhoods. Is it any
wonder that, now that the situation is reversed, they give back love?