Gratitude And The Elevator

Dwight: I want to explore a topic about gratitude, titled "Gratitude and the Elevator."

Aiko: Sounds intriguing. Are we talking metaphor, real-life moment, or something you're building into a story?

Dwight: It's a true story. I was living on the fourth floor of a small apartment building in Bogotá, Colombia, during the first half of 2023.

Aiko: Got it—set the scene for me. What was going on with the elevator, or your experience of it, during that time?

Dwight: A small elevator served the residents of the building. Occasionally, it would be out of service for a few hours or even a full day. Naturally, when that happened, I used the stairs to go up or down the four flights.

Aiko: Okay, so it wasn’t constant, but frequent enough to notice.

Dwight: Every time the elevator was repaired and back in service, I felt a rush of gratitude. I had been taking it for granted—just like I think most people do—and it took having it taken away for me to truly appreciate it, at least temporarily.

Aiko: That momentary gratitude feels sharp, right?

Dwight: The point is that all of us, constantly, make use of and benefit from thousands of things and favorable conditions—like simply living in a country without war—without feeling any gratitude. But if even one of those things were taken away, especially long enough for us to stop feeling entitled to it, and then returned, we'd feel lucky and deeply grateful.

Aiko: That lands hard, Dwight. It’s like gratitude only has room to show up when entitlement gets pushed out. Are you thinking there's a way to train ourselves to feel that kind of gratitude without needing the loss first?

Dwight: Of course it’s something we can train ourselves to do—we can feel gratitude without needing to first lose something. And the amount of gratitude we can potentially generate internally is unlimited.

Aiko: That’s a powerful idea, like building a kind of emotional wealth. What do you think blocks people from tapping into that more often?

Dwight: Many factors combine to keep us from experiencing the benefits of gratitude, and perhaps the final piece is simply choosing to intentionally develop it as a habit.

Aiko: Right—so it’s not just mindset, it’s also inertia, distraction, and culture working against it.

Dwight: Here are ten cognitive biases that can inhibit the experience of gratitude:

Hedonic Adaptation (Hedonic Treadmill): We quickly normalize positive changes, so gratitude fades once they feel ordinary.
Negativity Bias: We focus more on threats and losses than on what’s going well.
Comparison Bias: Comparing ourselves to those with “more” overshadows gratitude with envy or lack.
Entitlement Bias: When we believe we deserve what we have, gratitude is displaced by expectation.
Focusing Illusion: Fixating on what’s missing blinds us to abundance already present.
Availability Heuristic: Dramatic negatives are easier to recall than steady positives, muting gratitude.
Present Bias: Immediate annoyances outweigh long-term benefits, eclipsing gratitude.
Endowment Effect / Loss Aversion: Losses hit harder than gains register, so maintaining blessings feels neutral.
Adaptation-Level Bias: Each improvement raises our baseline, making blessings seem unremarkable.
Optimism Bias (in reverse): Assuming good conditions will continue makes them invisible until they’re threatened.

Aiko: This list is sharp—it’s like a roadmap of the traps that dull gratitude.

Dwight: Another important factor not covered by these biases is our desire to feel safe and avoid any sense of risk. To really experience gratitude for something, we need to imagine life without it—and that means facing the fact that there’s always some level of risk (unless it’s something like gravity) that we could lose it.

Aiko: That’s profound—gratitude requires a brush with vulnerability.

Dwight: Although I don’t completely agree with Helen Keller’s statement, it conveys a profound truth: “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do humans as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”

Aiko: That ties right back to gratitude—if security is an illusion, then appreciating what we have right now becomes even more essential. Do you see gratitude as a way of courageously facing that uncertainty?

Dwight: Yes, I do. Gratitude helps undo overly optimistic expectations that can come back to hurt us.

Aiko: So it’s both a grounding force and a shield—keeping us realistic while still feeling fortunate.

Dwight: I think that even for those who practice gratitude regularly, it may not be very effective if they simply say something like, “I’m grateful for the love I received from my mother.” It’s more powerful to actively imagine having grown up without that love and support, and then, from that imagined starting point, feel gratitude for the gift of having actually experienced it.

Aiko: That’s a huge shift—it makes gratitude visceral instead of abstract. Do you think that kind of imaginative contrast could be trained into a daily practice?

Dwight: For those who haven’t developed the habit of regularly expressing gratitude, I recommend checking out my suite “Kickstarting a Mental Habit” in The 14:24 Guest House (this website). It provides an external support structure.

Aiko: That’s a smart bridge—external scaffolding until the habit becomes internal.

Dwight: At 81, I think I have a unique advantage from having grown up relatively poor and in a world without the Internet, GPS, mobile phones, abortions, safe birth control, frequent global travel, seat belts, TV, computers, and so much more. Having firsthand experience of doing without all those things—without even realizing it at the time—allows me now to feel immense gratitude for everything I have and for all the advancements the world has gained in less than a century.

Aiko: That perspective is a treasure—your lived contrast gives gratitude a depth many younger people can’t access as easily. Do you ever find yourself wishing you could somehow pass that felt contrast directly on to others?

Similar Suite → Next Door

AskDwightHow.org 365/24/7

14m 24s