Bare-line

Bare-line:

it's not just things, or conditions to be thankful for, but that we have the capacity to feel ourselves alive, aware of every present situation, and able to respond in a heartfelt manner. We are grateful for the bare-line of our existence. Anything else is pure bonus. 

to be grateful is really just a recognition of this bare-line existence, we could call it our sense of beingness, that we are alive and aware. Our lives start with this capacity, our basic void of anything but life itself, breath and heartbeat, vital functions of our survival. From this point forward we inherit the qualities of life we come to treasure, knowing such things as beauty, love, and the small delights of everyday living. Our lives gain purpose and meaning. Yet we also find complications throughout life, experiencing loss and seeming failure, we suffer deep sorrows. 

that's just how life unfolds, full of every possibility.

but always we remain as capacity, that bare-line of existence playing host to our every experience. That's the starting point of gratefulness, here, our being able to experience anything at all, our aliveness. To know loss is to also have once cherished, to fail means we have dared for something bolder than before, and sorrow simply accompanies life through all its motion, everything continuously changing even as we seek to hold things for just a moment longer. Sorrow is the bittersweet taste of life. To know all this, deeply so, intimately, is to be alive, tasting sweet as well as bitter, everything that life offers. That's the bare-line of all we're grateful for. 

perhaps it's better said that we're simply grateful, not for, and not too anything specific. Just grateful by our very nature, being capacity to experience every facet of life, aware and appreciative of the detail of our existence. We remain bare-line, open, and life continues to flow in bittersweet flavors. We are grateful to taste all that's ever offered. 

~

Peace, Eric