The experience of gratitude is lost, too, because we tend to think of it primarily as some kind of "feeling." Feelings are fine, but they are also transient and ephemeral. Here today, gone tomorrow. Gratitude is not a feeling but an ongoing vision of than-full-ness that recognizes the gifts constantly being received. A feeling is fleeting, an emotion for the moment; gratitude is a mind-set, a way of seeing and thinking. Gratitude is the vision that "sees" gift and recognizes how gift-ed we are. This vision has always been recognized as a core experience of "spirituality."

 

A blind man was begging in a city park. Someone approached and asked him whether people were giving generously. The blind man shook a nearly empty tin. His visitor said to him, "Let me write something on your card." The blind man agreed. That evening the visitor returned. "Well, how were things today?" The blind man showed him a tin full of money and asked, "What on earth did you write on that card?" "Oh," said the other, "I merely wrote 'Today is a spring day, and I am blind.'"