Prayer, Gratitude, and “Hacks”

I’ve been discussing prayer with two friends who “get” prayer more than I do. Sometimes they struggle, but sometimes as they pray, often traditionally with others in a house of worship, they will rise beyond the words and feel a sense of holiness. A feeling separated from other times by a closeness to what most would call god.

I’ve never felt that sensation. For a long time I engaged in the juvenile trait of finding ways to disdain that which I did not have. So I would tell myself that only weak-willed people needed to seek solace in prayer. (I used to have the same foolish thought about therapy). Now I view the ability to get value from prayer as a strength. I know it can help ease times of trouble and add to times of joy.

I just turned 61, and while many would say it’s never too late to find my own path to prayer, I’m impatient and not yet prepared to invest the daunting amount of time to fake it until I make it.

So I’m trying to find an ersatz substitute.

A few weeks ago I was walking in Central Park on an absurdly beautiful February afternoon. I passed a playground sculpture of two bronze bears perfectly sized for children to sit on. Two young girls were grinning with joy as they pretended to ride the bears. I saw, and for a moment the world felt wonderful to me, and I was transported away from all other thoughts.

Later, I asked my two prayer discussion friends whether the sensation I felt bore any relation to a prayerful feeling. They said yes, that gratitude is one of the core tenets of all prayer. The prayer books are full of prayers expressing gratitude to god for creating the world and giving us a chance to enjoy it.

So I began to consider whether gratitude might be a prayer “hack,” a way to have that feeling of something that transported me out of myself. But then, on a subsequent walk through the park, I looked for a scene that would fill me with that same wonder about the world, and of course I failed. It’s not that gratitude isn’t worthwhile, but that when it comes through a conscious effort, at least for me, it fails to strike an emotional chord. It’s all intellect.

I was doomed I thought to wander my world and only very occasionally encounter a scene like the girls on the golden bears that could catch me unaware, actually startle me, and provoke that special feeling. The rarity of this seemed unacceptable to me.

This led me to come up with an as of yet untested “hack.”

There are plenty of times I’ll feel joy about something. Expressing a cogent thought in a sentence can give me joy. So can playing tennis or time with my family. What if I stop consciously looking for gratitude and instead wait for something unexpected to provoke joy?  Then my gratitude can be deeper, more meaningful. I need that element of surprise. If I anticipate it, my reaction will be drained of emotion, leaving only dry thought.

Will this work? I don’t know. If it doesn’t, I’ll have to consider other options. Maybe there are no shortcuts, and I’ll have to learn to pray the harder way. By saying the ancient prayers over and over.

As a seemingly irrelevant postscript, “hacks” have been on my mind. I discovered a hotel hack I’d like to share. Recently, my wife and I were due to check-in to a sold out hotel with a check-in time at 4 pm. The late afternoon check-in was inconvenient for us. I called the hotel early that morning, found that they had had one unoccupied room the night before, and I grabbed it. We were able to check in at 11 that morning, five hours early.

I took great pride (but not joy) in this tactic. My wife’s reaction: “What’s the big deal? So you made a phone call.” My wife’s reaction was echoed by the wife of our friends we were visiting. In fact, there was good natured laughter at my expense.

There’s a parallel to gratitude here, and a lesson too. If you have to point out that you did something you thought was clever, prepare for your cleverness to be downgraded, dismissed, perhaps even derided. Much better to wait for the praise than to force it!