A Gratitude Poem and Quote for Noticing What's Already Here
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Some of the best words about gratitude never use the word at all. Maya Angelou's line below is one of them. There's nothing in it about counting your blessings. It just points out that today has never happened before, and leaves you to take it from there.
That's the spirit of this literary prescription. I put these together at Book Quote Therapy, each one a small collection of reading for a particular feeling, and I share some of them here because so many of the lines end up on the walls of this shop. Angelou's is one of those. It's the sort of sentence that does its best work when you pass it every morning on the way to the kettle.
For: remembering to notice what's already here
The Quote
'This is a wonderful day. I have never seen this one before.'
The Poem
Gratitude by Edgar Guest
Be grateful for the kindly friends that walk along your way,
Be grateful for the skies of blue that smile from day to day,
Be grateful for the health you own, the work you find to do,
For round about you there are men less fortunate than you.
Be grateful for the growing trees, the roses soon to bloom,
The tenderness of kindly hearts that shared your days of gloom,
Be grateful for the morning dew, the grass beneath your feet,
The soft caresses of your babes and all their laughter sweet.
Acquire the grateful habit, learn to see how blessed you are,
How much there is to gladden life, how little life to mar!
And what if rain shall fall to-day and you with grief are sad,
Be grateful that you can recall the joys that you have had.
The Book
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
Gay spent a year writing one short essay a day about something that delighted him, a stranger's kindness, a particular shade of light, the absurdity of a public garden. It isn't about grand gratitude. It's about training yourself to notice small things on purpose, until noticing becomes the habit rather than the exception.
The Reflection
Gratitude has a way of sounding easy right up until you try to practise it on a genuinely difficult day. On those days it can start to feel like one more thing you're failing at, as if you're meant to talk yourself out of what's hard.
I don't think that's what it's for.
Gratitude isn't pretending things are fine. It's closer to a discipline of attention, a way of noticing what's still good, still here, sitting alongside whatever else is true. You can be exhausted and still notice the light coming through a window. You can be grieving and still notice that someone made you a cup of tea without being asked.
Neither cancels the other out. They just sit together, the way most true things do.
The Question to Sit With
What did I nearly miss today?
A Gentle Pause
I recorded a short meditation for exactly this, a quiet practice for sitting with gratitude whenever you need somewhere to land.
There's also a fuller prescription for gratitude waiting for you at Book Quote Therapy, with more books, poems, and lines to keep.
Words for the Wall
If you'd like a reminder where you'll see it every day, Maya Angelou's line also comes as a floral print, and e.e. cummings's i thank You God for most this amazing day makes a lovely companion to it. I also wrote a short morning gratitude poem of my own, for anyone who likes to start the day with it.
The book link is an Amazon affiliate link, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.