How big is the universe, how long is time? In how many other ways could the particles have been assembled?
Matter came together, and it formed you. Exactly you. That’s how you exist. Realizing the improbability of existence is the beginning of gratitude.
Be grateful for your eyesight. If you lost eyesight during your life, be thankful for the time you still could see. For most of its existence, the matter you are made of was and will be blind anyway.
If you were born blind, be thankful for those who can see and thus can and do help you.
Even for the sighted man, the arm and the foot are blind. Your arm and foot «see” through your eyes and mind. Similarly, without help, all humans are blind.
Blessed is the one, who helps his fellow humans to see. Unlike the spiritually blind, however, one who is blind only in eyes is unlikely to refuse the help of a sighted one.
Be grateful for the sun, the moon, and the stars, be grateful for the babbling brook, for the green grass and for the stones, because they give your improbable existence a majestic setting. And also be grateful that you are neither the sun nor the stones, because neither the sun nor the stones can learn something new every day.
Be thankful that you woke up, thankful that you got to see the day through. Be grateful that other people exist, some of which are actually nice.
Don’t be the stone, that fulfills a role in nature, but isn’t aware of its existence. Being truly aware of your own existence means being grateful. Being grateful means being aware of your existence.
Both the stone and you have events happening to them. Be grateful that you, unlike the stone, are aware of what happens to you. But even more be grateful, that unlike the stone you can make things happen.
Be grateful for those fellow humans who not only roll down the mountain of life like a stone, but will pause and share with you what they feel, what makes them sad, what makes them laugh and what they are grateful for.
Search and see what you can be grateful for. And then, again and again: Be grateful!
