Depends

How do you express your gratitude?

I say thank you, and I mean it.

I thank people, God, the sun the moon the stars. I’m a sky person, I look up all the time, they say you’re celestial energy if you look up.

I thank the planet for nurturing me, and love its diversity in all aspects of life.

However, there is a form of gratitude that moves you from within, that once you feel it you will never be the same again.

It started with a tv programme

I saw the programme about the Hubble Space Telescope at 30, and could have cried at the beauty of it. It spoke straight to my heart. The sheer vastness and variety of space moves me to the depths of my soul.

Since then, for me, there are two types of gratitude, that towards each other shown in hugs, thanks, gifts, and the wider gratitude for being a tiny, infinitesimal part of an awe inspiring whole. And that’s only our universe.

Generated by awe

That kind of gratitude, the cosmic, magnificent gratitude, is very much one of feeling, and one of the things I am grateful for is anything that fills me with wonder, with hope, with potential, with questions and with knowledge.

It’s all so much bigger than the petty squabbles on this planet that do such harm, cost so many lives, hurt so many, destroy so much. We are such a tiny part of the cosmos, even as an entire planet, yet we think we’re so important.

The opportunity to see through the eyes of a telescope, deep into space, to what they believe is the moment after the Big Bang happened, puts us into perspective.

If perhaps world leaders could understand how minuscule they are, that an entire universe can go on without them, and has survived for aeons without them, then they might let go of their own self-importance and see themselves as part of something bigger; which they are.

They might look at the stars, the heavens, the images, and be moved with so much gratitude just for being here, that they would put down their arms, their beliefs, their fears, and just get on with being alive. With meeting different people and not fearing them, or killing them.

If they felt awe struck by the beauty of this planet, stunned at the magnificence and power of the universe, filled with wonder at the idea of what’s going on out there, stars being born from dust right now, that will be here for millennia, they might be too busy pondering that to start a war or build a nuclear weapon.

If only they had beauty and wonder in their souls. If only they understood that level of gratitude.

I have it, and I’m so lucky.

I wish they did.

I hope you do.

With love beautiful people

Deb xx