The Grace and Glory of Gratitude

Typing these words on my computer while listening to Beethoven's 'Razumovsky' String Quartet. All I need to be happy is a laptop with an internet connection and all these simple joys of life come streaming in, like sunshine.

I don't pay much for my broadband connection, opting for the cheapest package available which is 89 ringgit a month for 30 Mbps. This connection is the umblical cord that provides nourishment to my soul. It is the key to all the greatest treasures of humanity through the centuries. Music, art, literature and access to all the best teachers on every subject in the world--everything is available at the click of the mouse.

What I feel is a deep sense of gratitude. With this alone, I could spend a thousand years in a cave, savouring the experience of mankind through the ages. I don't life in a posh neighbour nor have a large house furnished with designer furniture, but I do have a shelter, and sufficient food, and a good internet connection. The pandemic only makes us realize how little we all need to be really happy.

 Let's express gratitude for all the things we already have and not fret over things we don't. If you have a roof over your head and food to fill your stomach everyday, what more do you want?  Perhaps success; the kind of success defined by society: a social standing and being recognized as such and having the means to live life lavishly--the overseas holidays, the fine-dining and the designer clothes.  The good life. But for many, the pandemic has yanked all that away, reducing them to the bare necessities of life. But are you not grateful that, at the very least, you have that?

You are alright, right now. That's a mantra l have learned to tell myself, every time that I'm being anxious over something that is not exactly going my way. Well, at the very least I'm alive and at this moment, healthy. And if I care to really think about it: happy. Happiness is a simple thing. You are at ease and in possession of all your faculties, and being aware that you are, here and now, present and able to express gratitude for it.

Is that a difficult thing to do? If it is not, then it is not difficult to be happy. Happiness is simply gratitude. Gratitude is appreciating all that you have now and being aware that you are doing so. This awareness of the moment, this acknowledgement of the now, this presence of mind, body and soul--this is the divine state of grace and gratitude. 

The true prayer is a prayer of gratitude--of acknowledging one's fragility in the world and having made it so far with so little. It is with the grace of the universe that you live and thrive in this tiny sliver of space and time. When you see and feel that deep down in your soul, then you have been touched by the grace and glory of gratitude.

I Write, Therefore I Am

A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind

- Antoine De Saint-Exupery (French Aviator, Writer).

I'm typing these lines on a Saturday night. It has been a full and busy week as usual and I spent my Saturday as usual shopping for food and groceries in the morning and jogging at the park in the evening. I also write in my journal with my array of fountain pens. I also have a collection of inks of different colours ranging from the usual black, blue, red to more exotic colours from Diamine with fancy names like Claret, Green Umber, Steel Blue and Apple Glory. Writing longhand is a completely different experience from typing on a keyboard. You literally stroke your mind with the nib of the pen to tease out your innermost thoughts.

What's the benefit of writing in a journal? My main motivation for doing so is to understand myself better. When you put thoughts on paper, especially with a fountain pen, you slow down the pace of your thinking and allow the mind to breathe. Scribbling your thoughts on paper is like a mathematician working out a complex problem by first capturing it in a set of equations before working them out to their logical conclusion.

The pen acts like a seismograph--registering the minute movements of your thoughts. When you capture the stirring of your emotions on paper, you see them in their true colours. You feel their vibrations at the tip of your pen. Every nuance of your inner motivations are captured in the variation of your ink strokes on paper. I just love watching a wet fountain pen making marks across the surface of the paper. To me, that is how God created the universe--by writing out the Word.

Writing is spiritual. The act of drawing lines on a piece of paper that reflect the promptings of your mind is a piece of performance art.   You know your writing has quality when you've bridged the gap between thoughts in the head and written sentences on paper.  Writing longhand with a fountain pen helps in the process. The pen is a transducer of thoughts -- tapping the signals of the mind and amplifying them on paper, to be analyzed, read and disseminated, where they will trigger further thinking in better minds, influencing events in the real world.

I've called this process writhink.  Writing physicalizes thinking, allowing the signal of your thoughts to find their true expression in the external world. When you write what Hemingway calls a true sentence, you know that the sentence expresses the thought in the best possible way. And there's nothing more to say about it. That's one brick in the cathedral you're building in your mind. And you move on to the next true sentence.

Well, I am no Hemingway nor Exupery. But I write, therefore I am.