Beholden Gratitude.

I've been thinking about the difference between being beholden and being grateful.  Because I feel both most of the time, I'd mentally lumped them together, but they are two distinct experiences.  To feel beholden is to owe a debt, to face inadequacy, to put a relationship into the negative.  You might never be able to escape feeling beholden.  To feel grateful, is to feel free, to rejoice in one's good fortune, to elevate a relationship to hero status because by it you have been saved.  You never want to stop feeling grateful. The difference isn't in the experience.  It's in the person owed.  At least that's how it's been for me, now that I come to think of it.