There may be a desire to keep another locked in a web of blame and guilt. Unconditional gratitude given in these situations may at first feel as if we are letting people who we dislike “off the hook.” I can assure you from my own experience that it is ourselves we are letting off the hook. Gratitude, like its sister, forgiveness, frees the giver first of all. Gratitude brings freedom to our self-imposed prison of hatred and revenge. Perceived past wrongs are our prison bars. Unconditional gratitude melts these bars away. Hatred not only locks us in a tiny cell of self-pity, it keeps out those who are seeking to bring love into our life. (Hatred includes everything from rage to a seemingly innocent desire to avoid someone.) Our past, released with gratitude, frees our present to be as it could be.
Finally, the most marvelous gift that unconditional gratitude gives us is clarity and vision. Giving unconditional gratitude, I begin to see that everything is here to bless me. I really cannot explain how this happens. It just does. It makes no sense in terms of our worldly thought processes. Only the actual act, in which you give gratitude unconditionally, brings the fantastic results of seeing clearly. As I keep extending my gratitude to everyone in my past and my present, I start to see that all that surrounds me is actually in harmony. I begin to see that what I judged as harmful and unfair was really a misinterpretation, a faulty judgment based on my perception, which is very limited in its scope.
— Lee Coit, in Gratitude: A Way of Life, by Louise L. Hay and Friends, p. 40-42