What is gratitude?
Is it mere thankfulness or appreciation?
Is it the realization that something has been shared or given? Pah!
None of that. How ordinarily and
unexceptionally human.
Do you not know? Do
you not know what it is? Ah….yes, you
do. I know that you know. It is the feeling of going along every day in
every way in the silence, in the drudgery, in the unending workload, in the
confounded sorrow of being forgotten . . . and suddenly something happens. Who knows what it is?! Who cares?!
We can argue about it later. But for
now it is enough to know that something happens. And you stop in your tracks. You look up.
You see the ceiling, but the ceiling is not enough. So you look out the window, but it is not
enough either. So you open the d o o r,
and you look to the heavens.
And you are struck.
Suddenly it all makes sense, it all fits. You smile at the simplicity of it all. How could you not have seen it before? It is so simple. Even children could figure it out. In fact, they often do. But….it lasts at best for a few minutes and
often only a moment or two. Yet it is
there. It is enough. Like an Earthquake. Like a dam bursting. Like that moment before you fall when you
forget there is one more step on the stairs you are descending. It is like that. It is unmistakable.
You see it. Not
with your eyes—so unreliable, those human eyes—but with your heart. With your soul. At last, you say. I get it.
I finally see it. Thank you. Oh my God, thank you…. It all makes sense now…. How could I have been such a fool?
I knew you would not abandon me. I knew somehow the light would shine
again. It comes in strange colors
through the tears of my eyes, the water prisms catching the one source and
turning it into all the colors of the spectrum and beyond. Shimmering and sparkling into eternity. I should have been a great fool for not
believing. For forgetting. For wallowing in self-pity. For my childish anger. For my sullenness. For my ignorance. But here, now, see me. Look at me!
I am whole again.
The wood floor in my house, its boards are not hard
enough for my knees. I will go down to
the ocean and fall upon my knees on the hard and jagged rocks, and they will
speak to me. And I will know that it is
good.
This is gratitude.
