It's a challenge to be thankful these days. The world seems awash with horror and tragedy, wars and famines and vitriol sucking marrow from the bone of humanity. And the relentless algorithms that control so much of our lives feast on calamity, serving it up in heaping spoonfuls again and again.
If we look, though, within the murk are points of light - multitudes of them, twinkling, reminding us, should we care to look, that the world is not as bad as it seems, that there is a lot to be thankful for, heaps of hope within the bleak.
I could write volumes on the beauty of our world - and someday I'll write more - but for today, Thanksgiving, I'll simply share some reflections from great thinkers that may help inspire a touch of gratitude, a sprinkle of thanks, a glimmer of hope in all our lives.
Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving to you all.
Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.
- Denis Waitley -
There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate—the genetic and neural fate—of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death. I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers…Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.
- Oliver Sacks, Gratitude -
Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.
- Kahlil Gibran -
Our appreciation of life is keenest when our hold on it is most precarious…
- Michael Roberts -
Breath and life, and the opportunity to try. If you have nothing more, you always have that.
- Alicia Keys -
So it is not happiness that makes us grateful. It's gratefulness that makes us happy.
- David Steindl-Rast -
As the years pass, I am coming more and more to understand that it is the common, everyday blessings of our common everyday lives for which we should be particularly grateful. They are the things that fill our lives with comfort and our hearts with gladness -- just the pure air to breathe and the strength to breath it; just warmth and shelter and home folks; just plain food that gives us strength; the bright sunshine on a cold day; and a cool breeze when the day is warm.
- Laura Ingalls Wilder -
Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.
- Bob Marley -
The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes the home happy and life lovely.
- Louisa May Alcott -
So, simply to look on anything, such as a mountain, with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain of being in the vastness of non-being. Man has no other reason for his existence.
- Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain -
Each second we live in a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that never was before and will never be again. And what do we teach our children in school? We teach them that two and two makes four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all of the world there is no other child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed there has never been another child like you. And look at your body — what a wonder it is! Your legs, your arms, your cunning fingers, the way you move! You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must cherish one another. You must work — we all must work — to make this world worthy of its children.
- Pablo Casals, Joys and Sorrows -
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature ‑ the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.
- Rachel Carson -
Don't you cry for the lost
- Passenger -
Smile for the living
Get what you need and give what you're given
Life's for the living so live it
Or you're better off dead
Listen to this beautiful song here
Jake, I enjoy and value what you say and of course love the pictures. I am torn because I dedicate all my extra funds to Kenya. Yet I NEED A BALANCE ESPECIALLY IN THESE TIMES OF PAIN. CAN you THINK OF YOUR BLOG AS GIVING BALANCE AND LIGHT WAY OUT IN Kenya?