Gratefulness

This line of narration from cinematographer Louie Schwartzberg’s film shown June 4, 2011 at TEDx San Francisco …

“You think this is just another day in your life. It’s not just another day. It’s the one day that is given to you today. It’s given to you. It’s a gift. It’s the only gift that you have right now and the only appropriate response is gratefulness. If you do nothing else but to cultivate that response to the great gift that this unique day is, if you learn to respond as if it were the first day in your life and the very last day, then you will have spent this day very well.”

True, true.

Reading Ted Conover’s Rolling Nowhere now. Conover left college for a time to ride the rails as a hobo and Rolling Nowhere documents that experience. 30 pages in, I’m thinking about the big, bad world beyond my comfort zone. I’m fantasizing about the road, about selling everything I own and putting the money in an iris scan-accessible bank account. I see myself disappearing over the horizon on a motorcycle. Not Robert Pirsig exactly, since I’d leave the motorcycle maintenance to others, but … out. I’d have camping and communications equipment. I’d blog.

Gratitude, it seems, does require cultivation.