Understanding Gratitude - A Powerful Step in Life's Journey

 Understanding gratitude and the power found in living a life in gratitude is one of the most powerful forces that thrust us into an overwhelmingly successful journey. What does it mean to be grateful for many things or anything in our lives? Is it the thank you when a prayer is answered? Is it the swift acknowledgement that our angel must be with us when we escape a driving penalty or a parking spot opens up just in time? Being thankful is a part of gratitude, but only a part.

What has taken place before we can offer gratitude for even a simple breath of life? It takes the synchronicity of millions of things we are oblivious to. Imagine what has happened to allow you take that breath! Our universe has continued in perfect harmony. The atmosphere has been cleansed of toxins that would prevent a safe breath, the trees and plants have exchanged the carbon dioxide to create oxygen that our bodies can inhale and use to continue life.

And within us, what has taken place? Og Mandio said it best in his 'God Memorandum.' "Is your heart stricken? Does it leak and strain to maintain your life? No. Your heart is strong. Touch your chest and feel its rhythm, pulsating, hour after hour, day and night, thirty-six million beats each year, year after year, asleep or awake, pumping your blood through more than sixty thousand miles of veins, arteries, and tubing... pumping more than six hundred thousand gallons each year. Man has never created such a machine. Are your lungs befouled? Does your breath of life struggle to enter your body? No. Your portholes to life support you even in the vilest of environments of your own making, and they labor always to filter life-giving oxygen through six hundred million pockets of folded flesh while they rid your body of gaseous wastes. Your brain is the most complex structure in the universe. I know. Within its three pounds are thirteen billion nerve cells, more than three times as many cells as there are people on your earth. To help you file away every perception, every sound, every taste, every smell, every action you have experienced since the day of your birth, I have implanted, within your cells, more than one thousand billion protein molecules. Every incident in your life is there waiting only your recall. And, to assist your brain in the control of your body I have dispersed, throughout your form, four million pain-sensitive structures, five hundred thousand touch detectors, and more than two hundred thousand temperature detectors. No nation's gold is better protected than you. None of your ancient wonders are greater than you." You are the Creators finest creation. All of this was required to function perfectly to allow you to take a single breath. And so much more was happening.

Understanding gratitude means we look much deeper than the parking angels, the good luck that we escaped something unpleasant or even the deeper thanks we offer when we have escaped a truly dangerous situation. It means we understand that life is so precious that all of these things have worked in harmony to provide us the opportunity to live. The absence or interruption of any of the events that have quietly taken place behind the scenes means your journey is interrupted and perhaps even ended.

Taking the time to truly understand what is required to allow the life journey to continue is the beginning of understanding gratitude any why it must be one of the most important priorities in our daily life. It is the surety that being alive is miraculous and that we are indeed a part of something wonderful rather than nothing at all.

When we really grasp this truth everything in our lives changes; because everything about us changes. Our perception, our concept of what life means and the value it holds is suddenly filled with wonder. Living in gratitude means that the moment you wake up each day you understand that millions of events have transpired in perfect synchronicity to allow you to awaken and make a single choice for the new day. You are a miracle; understanding this will allow you to see the opportunities and make the best possible choices!