For years I searched ways in which to thank you for reading these words. To thank you for having been here, for learning the art of communication, for bringing the light of your consciousness into this world and for contributing to the diversity of this existence. Echoes of your choices spread across the Everything, gifting experience back to this Universe that gave us birth.
These sentences will now become the conduit through which I will channel my gratefulness for your being. You may wonder how is it that I can write all this to somebody that I perhaps don’t even know. I will explain by showing you my image of gratefulness, for it is this feeling that guides and inspires me.
Reflecting the gift
Gratefulness is an expression of respect. Life doesn’t develop without effort. It’s thanks to an amazing coming together of astronomic odds that we are here as sentient individuals. According to some philosophies, our separation is only temporary, so isn’t the respect we grant to each other really the respect we grant to ourselves? By extension, everything that surrounds us is worthy of solemn respect.
Gratefulness is a bringer of peace. It stimulates empathy and patience towards each other. Knowing how to appreciate the gift of somebody’s presence is a transformative skill that leads to constructive outcomes.
Gracefulness is a species of humility. We have the means to accomplish what people centuries ago would consider miracles. Being able to share these words among us means we have so much more than our predecessors. I consider it humbling to even be read, so these words better deliver something worthy of being read.
Gratefulness is a propagator of wisdom. It is like an emotional key for opening doors of the mind. Discoveries or actions that conjure this feeling may lead to realizations that are conductive towards building up wisdom. Being grateful will keep opening new paths. Knowledge will come as a river, fed by a rain of curiosity.
Gratefulness is a compass for love. Few feelings are as magnetic towards love as this one. A gift is being given to us in the form of each unfolding moment of life. We experience each other and learn from the interplay of thoughts. Everything that touches our consciousness – a word, a mote of dust or the fiery sphere up in the sky – becomes a gift. A gift is an expression of love, a means of conveying it. If everything we experience is a gift, then we could say that these infinite gifts make up a sort of universal magnetic field.
To you
Everything that has the possibility of exercising free will is also a force of creation. It matters not what you create. Whatever it is you’re doing, you’re building experience, for yourself and for those around you. So thank you for creating. Life is the process of crafting experience. I am grateful to you because I’ve been shaped by the same process – in this respect, we’re siblings.
I sometimes wonder if I should be yet more thankful to those that have influenced me directly. If we’ve met even for one second, if I’ve heard something you said or read something you’ve written, then I have been touched. But gratefulness is a primordial emotion – it is or it is not. It’s unquantifiable.
This means it is fair to be equally grateful to everything that exists. It’s a misconception that this would devaluate the emotion. The universalization of a feeling does not make it disappear. Instead, the complete integration of a nourishing emotion leads to the enrichment of life.
To humanity, my brothers and sisters
We’ve had plenty of conflicts throughout history. We’ve made mistakes. But what I’d like to focus on is all the fascinating art that we’re creating, the progress towards understanding ourselves and our ecosystem and, perhaps more important than anything, the way we love and the way we dream. I believe that this is a bountiful source of gratefulness for having been shaped by this society.
It is thanks to everybody I’ve ever met – all the human teachers and their works – that I’ve come to welcome gratefulness in my life in this way. I may not know you, but knowing you is not a requirement for being grateful for your being here, reading these words.
This contact between two imaginations, two Universes of language, is both timeless and ephemeral. It is so beautiful in its instant simplicity that the only constructive outcome is to be entertained by the experience and perhaps draw a positive thought out of it.
Because you are here
Having the opportunity to share these thoughts with another consciousness – and all that this entails – is reason enough for having lived. It doesn’t even matter if you belong to the same species I do. Indeed, I do believe that the traces of our creations are not limited to this civilization.
Thanks for stopping by, for sharing some of your time, perhaps a tiny but undoubtedly important slice of your existence. Thank you for inspiring art, for creating it and for being who you are.
This article is the first part of The “Art of Peace” Trilogy^.
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