Tirtha Writes

Rethinking gratitude, privilege and emotional legitimacy

Gratitude is often used as a social filter – permitting certain emotions while quietly barring others. In a culture that equates visible comfort with happiness, those with “good lives” are expected to mute their discomfort. A high-paying career for some, a buoyant family for others, frequent international travel for the rest – layered with fundamental privileges such as safety, opportunity, and support – become reason enough to dismiss anything unresolved beneath the surface. What is visible is assumed to be complete; what is felt but unseen is treated as excess.

Privilege, then, often arrives with an unspoken expectation: that discomfort should remain quiet. The rule is subtle yet firm – if your life looks good, you are not permitted to complain. Gratitude shifts from a personal emotion to a moral obligation, something owed rather than freely felt. Within this framework, emotional honesty is reframed as entitlement, and dissatisfaction is positioned not as information to be understood, but as noise to be silenced.

Language plays a quiet but powerful role in reinforcing this logic. Phrases such as “Be grateful,” “Others have it worse,” or “You’re lucky – why complain?” are rarely offered with malice, yet they carry an implicit dismissal. They do not invite reflection or understanding; they close the conversation altogether. Gratitude becomes a superficial resolution – a way to conclude the narrative rather than engage with it. In doing so, emotional complexity is flattened, and discomfort is left unexamined.

Over time, this pressure is internalised. Guilt begins to surface – guilt for wanting more, for reaching further, for imagining a life beyond what already exists. Ambition becomes tangled with entitlement, desire confused with dissatisfaction. The result is not contentment, but self-censorship. When individuals are taught to be thankful before they are taught to be honest, they learn to minimise their own emotional truth. What might have been curiosity becomes restraint; what could have been growth becomes quiet endurance.

There is, however, another way to understand gratitude – one that does not require self-erasure. Honest gratitude is grounding, not shrinking; it steadies rather than restrains. It allows room for movement, acknowledging what is present without insisting the story end there. In this framing, gratitude becomes a foundation, not a ceiling.

It becomes possible to hold two truths at once: this is good and this is not enough. Not enough does not signal ingratitude, but incompletion – a desire to evolve rather than passively accept. Growth does not negate gratitude; it deepens it. Choosing to move forward, then, is not an act of ingratitude, but a decision to grow responsibly, not struggle silently.