Jim: Dostoyevsky's Gratitude

I just started reading David Brooks's new book The Two Mountains, and its good enough that I have forgotten at times that he is the NY Times opinion writer and NPR contributor that I thought long ago I had lost any interest in. Who knew? In a discussion about the power of gratitude, he shares the story of the moment in which Fyodor Dostoyevsky experienced one of the most profound gratitudes ever recorded in literature. Here is the story:

"[Dostoyevsky] had been imprisoned in Saint Petersburg with a group of other revolutionaries and sentenced to die. The men were marched out into a square in their burial shrouds. The firing squad gathered, and the drums sounded. Death was seconds away. Then, at that instant, by prearranged plan, a messenger arrived on horseback. The execution was to be stayed by the clemency of the czar. The original sentences would apply-- hard labor.

One man broke down crying, singing out loud, 'Long live the czar!' Another went mad. Dostoyevsky was brought back to his cell and suddenly was overcome with joy. 'I cannot recall when I was ever as happy as on that day,' he later recalled. 'I walked up and down my cell ... and sang the whole time, sand at the top of my voice, so happy at being given back my life.'

He immediately wrote to his brother: 'And only then did I know how much I loved you my dear brother!' All the small questions that used to concern him fell away. 'When I look back on my past and think how much I wasted on nothing, how much time has been lost in futilities, errors, laziness, incapacity to live; how little I appreciated it, how many times I sinned against my heart and soul-- then my heart bleeds.'

His life, he felt, would begin again. 'Never has there seethed in me such an abundant and healthy kind of spiritual life as now . . . Now my life will change. I shall be born again in a new form ... Life is a gift. Life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness . . . Life is everywhere, life is in ourselves, not in the exterior.'"

For me, this passage is a master class in gratitude, addressing why it is important, what it makes possible, how it is linked to other crucial emotional habits like forgiveness, reflection,  expressions of love. Dostoyevsky also reminds us that the practice of gratitude is a decision as much as it is a reaction, and one may exercise to salvage situations that might otherwise foster resentment.

I read the czar's treatment of Dostoyevsky and the rest of the prisoners as manipulation (recall that the sparing of their lives was the czar's intention all along) not clemency. Regardless, it's hard to look on (let alone find) the bright side of a sentence of hard labor. Clearly, Dostoyevsky's decision to see his new chance at life as a gift not only saved his sanity, it became a transformative experience in his life. One might even infer that Dostoyevsky's life was made better for this entire experience.

If I can use gratitude to change my life in ways that snatch happiness from the jaws of despair, then I'll have even more to be thankful for. It will, I know, take practice.