Gratitude

Grateful for a WhatsApp message received after midnight from a former student simply expressing gratitude for the support I offered years ago. That simple message of thanks brightened my spirit, inspired my heart, providing strength for the journey ahead.

We live, love, breathe, create, play, and work in a world of relations.
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We are impossibly born, living products of billions of connections formed through attraction and reaction across space and time.

​We are alive today because of the relations our ancestors maintained with the world.

Some of those relations were life-giving.
Some of those relations were life-taking.

But here we are.

Born to each other.
Born to this place.
Born to this time.

Here we are.
We have survived.

And because we have survived, our knowledge, our gifts and experience are critical to this next step that we are taking as a living community, as a species, as a planet.

Our gifts have helped us survive this far. And now we must join together, collectively and use our gifts strategically, to live collaboratively and step back into relation with this living, breathing, spinning world.

My health. Your health. The health and well-being of our living loved ones and our loved ones to come depends on it. The health and well-being of this planet depends on it.

Take time today to thank those behind you, those ahead of you, those below you, those above you, those beside you--those who have accompanied you all along the way.

Take time to thank this time, this place that has received you.

Our spirits are fed through gratitude. Thank someone around you. Out loud. Write a letter. Send a message. A WhatsApp. Call.

Reach out and affirm and nourish your relations.

Gratitude warms the heart.
Strengthens the spirit.
Nourishes the soul.

Gratitude is the fiber that weaves together our world of relations.

As I write this, the faces of my loved ones, of my family, my friends, my teachers, my mentors, my students, and colleagues, my clients, my bosses, my ancestors, the beloved plants and beloved animals, beloved trees and beaches, beloved rivers and mountains, beloved hot springs, lakes, and water falls, beloved stars--and even my enemies--all these faces flash across my mind.

I am grateful.

I am grateful for you.