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There can be challenges to feeling and expressing gratitude. People can try to avoid gratitude, often by being cynical, because they don’t want to feel dependent.
Robert A. Emmons, in Thanks! How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier, explains why part of the human psyche is resistant to being grateful:
“We don’t like being reminded that we needed help. We don’t want to be beholden to our saviours. Gratitude would seem to pose a challenge for this reason alone.
Gratitude can be a bitter pill to swallow, humbling us and demanding as it does that we confront our own sense of self-sufficiency. So we may avoid it as we avoid going to the doctor for the annual prostate exam.”
Interestingly, this idea is traced by our sages to Adam in the beginning of time. G-d created Chavah to be his partner, a great gift. Yet when confronted by G-d after defying His command to not eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, Adam’s first line of defense is to blame Chavah (and indeed G-d Himself!) by replying, “The woman You gave to be with me gave me of the fruit of the tree…”
The Talmud comments on this episode by pointing out the irony of how swiftly gratitude can turn to ingratitude.
It boils down to our willingness to recognise that we are dependent beings.
It’s a fact of nature that we are dependent, not only on G-d, but on other human beings. We need to recognise this. Once we do, we will open the gates for gratitude, which in turn will open the doors of joy.