This is the fifth entry in my Morning Drift series — a personal search and journal of gratitude, presence, and the shifting truths I find in sobriety. These aren’t polished guides or programs, just lived moments: presence, gratitude, reflections, frustrations, questions, and the daily work of finding balance.
Gratitude and Gratuity
It is Friday morning, October 3, 2025, and I keep turning over the word gratitude. Then gratuity.
Gratitude is the feeling of thankfulness and appreciation, from the Latin gratus — “thankful, pleasing.” Gratuity is the outward form of that feeling, a tip, a small payment left behind as recognition. In American culture especially, gratuity has become tied to service, wages, and social pressure — a near expectation, whether we admit it or not.
But somewhere in that twist, the meaning changed. Gratitude isn’t supposed to be a checkbox at the bottom of a receipt. It’s not guilt, it’s not transaction.
And while tipping isn’t always welcomed in other countries, gratitude itself is often built more deeply into the culture — shown in words, gestures, or presence instead of money. That contrast makes the point clearer: gratitude is bigger than a tip.
Gratitude is work. It takes noticing. It takes effort. And maybe the cleanest way to say it is this: gratitude is a gratuity you give yourself. A tip for paying attention. A reward for doing the work of being present.
When Lists Turn Redundant
I envy people who can keep gratitude lists.
I’ve tried, but mine always cycle back to the same things: a shower, hot water, a bed to sleep in. Important, yes — but repetitive. After a while it feels hollow, like I’m just checking boxes instead of actually feeling it. The words lose weight.
At a SMART meeting, I met someone who approached it differently. He was more of a writer, while I tend to wander and circle back later. He kept a spreadsheet of his gratitude list. Six months long, maybe more. No repeats.
His method was to take one thing and stretch it outward. Start with water. Then hot water in the shower. Hot water for cooking and cleaning. The heater that makes it possible. The pipes that carry it. The technology that lets me turn a faucet and expect it instantly.
That kind of thinking forces you deeper.
Being grateful doesn’t mean cherry-picking the easy items. “I’m thankful for deodorant.” But how did that deodorant even get here? Who saw the need, created it, and put it into my hands?
That’s where the perspective lives.
Gratitude as Work
That’s why I lost interest in the simple lists. They felt too easy. Gratitude, if it’s real, takes work.
It isn’t passive. It’s intentional. You have to notice things you’d usually skip over, turn your attention away from what’s wrong and actually look for what’s good. That shift alone takes effort.
It’s like planning a vacation. Saving money, coordinating schedules, working around a budget. All of it takes energy, but the payoff is obvious — a trip, a memory, a picture.
With gratitude, the payoff is quieter. It lives inside your head, in the conscious and the subconscious, and it changes how you move through daily life. The benefit is real, but you only feel it if you do the work.
Mile Markers
Driving to work this morning, I caught myself feeling thankful for the freeway.
It sounds silly, but then I thought about it. Traffic laws that most people actually follow. Lane lines, markers, barriers. Reflectors spaced so carefully to keep us reminded and in our lanes. Signs telling us how far we are, or how close.
That’s what gratitude feels like — noticing the markers that keep me present.
In my last post I wrote about going to the beach.
It’s three miles away, but I often forget it’s there. When I go, I’m reminded that gratitude isn’t just about listing the obvious — it’s about focusing on what I usually overlook. Learning to notice.
Gratitude, for me, is showing up at places like that more often, being aware enough to take them in instead of assuming they’ll always be there.
Cookies and Gratuities Everywhere
Gratuities are everywhere. And I don’t just mean the 18% box on a receipt or slipping a dollar to a valet.
Sometimes it’s as simple as saying thank you when somebody hands you a cookie. At my office, two days a week there are baked cookies — Wednesdays and Fridays. We have a kitchen, and the cookies are baked there, fresh, and put out for everyone. A little perk. Some people just grab one and move on.
Me, I stop and think about it. I’m grateful for the cookies themselves. For the science of baking. For chocolate. For the cocoa plant. For the person who figured out how to harvest it, roast it, and turn it into something that ended up in my hands. For the employee who started the perk. For the company that allows it and encourages it. And the list goes on.
It’s not just a simple cookie… but simply, it is… just… a… simple cookie.
That’s gratitude too — tracing things back, realizing how much work and how many hands are behind even the smallest gift.
Technology and Gratitude Lost
It’s easy to keep chasing the next thing. The flashy, the distraction, the squirrel. But when I slow down and really look at it, even the most ordinary parts of life are stacked with science, effort, and human hands. Hot water. Deodorant. Chocolate. Freeways. Logistics. Nature.
It’s humbling when you break it down.
Even this blog — the fact that I can type on a device, send it through networks, and share it instantly. Phones. Video. FaceTime. Platforms connecting everyone to everyone. We live in a crazy, connected age where everyone can be a journalist, a food critic, a broadcaster.
And yet somewhere in that twist, we’ve lost our gratitude for it. We treat it like it’s nothing.
For me, this writing is a way to reclaim that meaning — to see the unfiltered gratuity in the everyday.
Gratitude, Reclaimed
Gratitude gets lost the same way holidays do. Christmas turned into retail. Valentine’s Day into a Hallmark necessity. Memorial Day from honoring fallen heroes to celebrating the start of summer.
Gratitude. Gratuity.
Not a list. Not a checkbox.
Just the effort of noticing, and the reward of knowing it mattered.
Part four of the Morning Drift series — Tides and Truth: No single tide, no single truth…
Tides and Truth... 