WHY I HATED THANK YOU NOTES, AND WHAT CHANGED MY MIND

 I’ve always hated thank you notes. The impersonal, cultural script we’ve been taught since childhood: “Dear So-And-So, Thank you for the doll. I really like it. Love, So-And-So.”

My whole life, I’ve felt guilty receiving thank you notes because I thought about what a bummer it must have been for the senders to write and mail them. The sense of duty and obligation that’s drilled into us as kids. I mean, how many times did our parents force us to write thank yous for our birthday gifts?

Were you ever actually grateful or – like most kids – did you view it as a chore?

Even more than receiving thank you notes, I hated writing them. Feeling constrained by the expected script, I felt the necessity to list the gifts, as if the note served as some sort of receipt for goods exchanged. I hated writing about how the gifts would be used, as though I were reaffirming the usefulness of the exchange. I hated feeling like gift giving was some sort of transactional process.

So I stopped writing thank you notes. And I’ve never made my kids write them. And I felt good about that decision. Until now.

Maybe it’s because, during this time of social isolation, our connections have become so fleeting and fragile. Maybe I’m becoming more sentimental as I age. Maybe it’s my increased awareness of the impermanence of life. Maybe it’s because I’m finally in a place where I have the self-confidence to genuinely accept thank yous and compliments.

But I’m pretty sure the game changer for me was when I absorbed the knowledge that expressing appreciation in a specific way is a form of love. Call it my thank-you-note-a-ha-moment.

What if, I thought, I changed the way I express thanks?

Oftentimes, traditional thank you notes are mostly about the person writing them. I mean, we touch on the gift giver, but then generally turn the attention back to ourselves (e.g. I love this gift, I will use it to fill-in-the-blank, I can’t wait to try blah, blah, blah).

What if, instead of using thank you notes to verify a transaction and talk about how great the gift is for us, we used the notes as opportunities to convey our appreciation in a way that truly made the giver feel seen? What if we used thank you notes as a way to express gratitude, not just for the gift itself, but for the qualities and personal attributes we love about the gift giver? What if doing so brought us closer to the people in our lives?

And, with these possibilities in mind, I changed my stance on thank you notes. I bought stationery. And I’m officially becoming a thank-you-note person. Because reframing thank you notes as expressions of love, instead of expected social niceties, is something I can get behind.  

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