Consider the following comments on gratitude.
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.
Cicero
Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.
Aesop
When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.
Willie Nelson
Gratitude can be a quiet apology for a world we have decided not to change.
We are told to be thankful for little, which is convenient for those who keep the most.
Write a reflective piece in response to one or more of these comments. Your essay will be assessed on the quality of your thinking and the way you express it.
A way into this prompt
Reflect on gratitude as a disposition that can deepen a life or quietly anaesthetise it, depending on whether it opens the eyes or closes them. You might begin with a moment you felt genuine thankfulness and examine what it did to your sense of what you had and what you still wanted. Move between the view that gratitude is the root of contentment and the rival suspicion that it can be used to make people accept too little. A reflective turn could distinguish gratitude that flows from clear sight, seeing plainly what one has been given, from gratitude demanded as a way to silence complaint. Caution: resist concluding that gratitude is simply a virtue or simply a sedative, since the more honest ground is noticing how the same feeling can either reconcile us to life or reconcile us to injustice.