To Live Well, Say Your Thanks

Gratitude is essentially an exercise in humility. It is an acknowledgement of other people's contribution towards your enrichment. We, humans, are social animals. Right from birth we are not designed to survive alone. We live together, grow together, struggle and survive together. To offer thanks is to acknowledge that one's growth story is not a solo game but a team effort. To thank others is to let them know that your life was touched in a good way and you appreciate it.

Easy gratitude cures impatience and nurtures optimism. You learn to see that even those who are your severest critics, rednder you a great service and deserve your thanks. Kabir records their contribution in his doha:

निंदक नियरे राखिए ऑंगन कुटी छवाय,
बिन पानी, साबुन बिना, निर्मल करे सुभाय।

Keep your critics close, in your home and hearth:

Without soap or water, they cleanse character. 

And Shakespeare wrote,

"Sweet are the uses of adversity, which like a toad, ugly and venemous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head."

Gratitude helps us find the good in the bad, the silver lining in the dark clouds, the diamonds in the dust. A grateful person has more reasons to smile and more potetnital to wriggle out of difficulties than an ingrate.

Gratitude inspires gratitude, just like spite breeds spite. In an increasingly unkind world, words of kindness and thanks stand out. They're often remembered and kindness will come back to you in some way or the other. Karma is a potent phenomenon. In her poem, "Little Things" Julia Carney wrote,

Little acts of kindness,

Little words of love,

Make our earth happy,

Like the heaven above.

Instead of fighting your way up into heaven, let heaven descend into you. Say, thank you. And mean it too. 

I'll leave you the happy task of finding those you wish to thank. (Make it a habit so you won't have to be conscious of it). 

After all else (or before it, if you will), do not forget to thank the non-human: Call it God, or nature: the sun, soil, water and air: the environment that makes it all possible. Life's a gift and one must honour the sublime maker, the sum of everything, the whole of which you're a part. Thank yourself. 

And let me thank you, reader. Knowing that you will read, I write, and am greatly enriched by it.