A Deep Gratitude Reflection on Life, Body, and Existence via /r/gratitude

Hello r/gratitude,

I would like to share a very long personal reflection on gratitude—a mindful appreciation of life’s many facets, from the smallest details of my body and senses to the vastness of the universe. This text explores how gratitude transforms my understanding of beauty, imperfection, and existence itself.

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I’m grateful for the dust settled on my shoes, inviting me to polish them and enjoy that feeling.
For the laces, every step I take with them, and their tightness that sometimes squeezes my feet.
For the sound of my footsteps, the warmth of my feet, and even the smell of my socks.
From my smallest to biggest toes, their nails and hairs—I’m thankful. Also for the curve of my soles.

I’m grateful for my dry hair. I once thought nature or God had forced this dryness and stiffness on me, and it bothered me.
Later, I realized that discomfort was not mine originally; others taught me that dry hair was bad, and I believed it.
When I understood that, I became thankful for every single strand.

I appreciate my dark skin, even when it itches and gives me a pleasant sensation.
I’m thankful that this skin protects me from skin cancer.
For a long time, I wished my skin were lighter, but now I value it.

I’m grateful for the wrinkles on my face, signs of life experience.
For my weak eyesight, which helps me see ugliness less clearly and suffer less from it.
I’m also thankful for needing glasses. People say I look smarter and more stylish with glasses, and I appreciate that too.

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Beauty, Ugliness, and Life Philosophy

I’m thankful for ugliness because it makes beauty more meaningful.
Even ugliness alone, without beauty, I appreciate; it has its own kind of beauty.
Is beauty or ugliness absolute, or do we simply perceive them that way?
I haven’t found the answer, but I’m grateful for the search itself.

I appreciate people’s words and judgments, which act as mirrors helping me understand myself better.
A single white hair has grown on my right forearm for a long time; I’m thankful for that too.

I’m thankful for the overall shape of my face—square and rectangular.
For squares, rectangles, all geometric shapes, and math in general—even though I never liked math.
And I’m grateful for not liking math, because otherwise, I wouldn’t have known how I felt about it.

I’m grateful for my voice—not like a singer’s or the beautiful songs of birds.
Maybe if I had a beautiful voice, I wouldn’t have come to this gratitude.

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Nature, Silence, and the Senses

I’m grateful for silence on a mountaintop and the sound of the wind blowing.
I love to sit for hours and listen to the wind’s speech with my skin, hair, face, and hands, feeling the coolness of its words.
Although we don’t speak the same language, we understand each other well.

I’m thankful for my hands and fingers that write what passes through my mind.
For my tongue in my mouth, helping me speak and recognize flavors.

For language—with its rules, structure, words, syllables, and sentences—and when words become poetry, I’m thankful.
For my ears that send sounds to my brain unfiltered, letting it analyze.

For my thoughts, the ability to think, and my brain that has brought me to this gratitude.

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Memory, Emotions, and Personal Growth

I’m grateful for my memory, which gradually lets me forget bad feelings and memories.
Thankful for the bad that marks boundaries and keeps my life away from meaninglessness and repetition.
For the good that motivates me to continue living.

For my ignorance, which sometimes makes me think I’m important and that whatever I say is valid;
My ignorance focuses my mind on the present moment and what matters more.

I appreciate every part of my body, even if I don’t know their functions or am unaware of some.
Thankful for my cells that build me and constantly renew my existence moment by moment.

I’m grateful for myself—my being, my actions, wishes, thoughts, simplicity, kindness, peacefulness, stubbornness, introspection.
For all my decisions, right or wrong.
For my courage and fears, joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, love, hate, envy, anger, regrets, efforts, and mistakes—
all these feelings that make a human a human.

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Family and Human Relationships

I’m grateful for the women in my life: my mother, sister, grandmother who loved me unconditionally even if I realized it late;
I appreciate their love and affection.

I’m thankful for the men: my father, who feels shy to say beautiful words or “I love you.”
I appreciate his existence; he gives meaning to my being—even if he doesn’t express it beautifully.
I accept and value him as he is.

I’m thankful for my brothers, for their companionship, rivalry, silence, shared laughter, playing together, meaningless fights, constant support, and deep presence even when wordless.

For my family and my uncle, whom I still miss after all these years.
For those who sacrificed their lives to protect our homeland, I’m grateful.

For friends, acquaintances, fellow citizens, people worldwide, animals, plants, and trees—each carrying a part of the great wheel of existence—I’m thankful.

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Life, the World, and the Universe

I’m thankful for my job, which polishes my behavior, thoughts, soul, expectations, and desires.
For my endless desires, engines driving me to explore, create, learn, and give.

I once sought to change the world, but now I see everything as it is, is beautiful;
I’m grateful for this acceptance and beauty.

Thankful for the white clouds scattered in the dark night sky and the stars.
For planet Earth, cradle of all living beings, dancing around itself and the sun, providing calmness to its dwellers.

For that piece of rock floating in mostly cold and dark endless space, maybe not wandering aimlessly at all.
For the infinite universe giving me the feeling of endless discovery and search, and for the wonder of this feeling itself.

For a world that makes my problems small and gifts me freedom and limitlessness, I’m thankful.
For the feeling of having no limits and being free, too.

If one day it turns out this world is not infinite, I’d still be grateful for its finiteness.
The known and the unknown both astonish and excite me.

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Small and Everyday Things

I’m thankful for a cat basking peacefully under the sun, teaching me the calmness I now enjoy.

For the sound of an ambulance siren reminding me of death and illness, pushing me to appreciate every moment of life.
To accept death—the “impossible ender of all possibilities”—will one day come for everyone.

I’m grateful for the shortness of life, which ignites my passion and keeps boredom away.
For the unknown future and for moments when I run out of patience—these keep life exciting.

For the blessing of death and non-existence and beyond it, existence—the force that turns the great wheel of being.

For the sound of an airplane overhead, lifting my gaze to the skies.

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Loneliness, Pain, and Experience

I’m thankful for my loneliness that pushes me toward deep thinking, self-knowledge, and seeking life’s meaning.
Can you believe some people are strangers to themselves and afraid of being alone?

For an ant I accidentally stepped on but survived—I’m grateful; it reminded me to be careful not to harm anyone or anything.

For the rough leaves of shrubs or a tiny splinter lodged in my pinky finger that hurt for a while, I’m thankful.
For pain, which gives a feeling of being alive.

For the cold of ice cream and ice on a hot summer day.
For warmth of a blanket and a heater in winter, I’m thankful.

For fire when we gathered around it on chilly nights, for the magical flames.

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Smells and Tastes

I’m thankful for the scent of a perfume shop, cosmetics, tangerines, wild mint by a creek, and the strange, pleasant smell of my computer mouse pad.
For the smell of a traffic ticket and even the traffic officer—I was the one annoyed by speeding past so much beauty; it reminded me to enjoy the journey, not just the destination.

For the smells of park grass, pastries, exhaust smoke, wind-blown soil, tree bark, sliced watermelon, syrup, sweets, new clothes, car tires, paper money, and bricks—I’m grateful.

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Bonds, Memories, and Art

For the taste of a lover’s lips and the birth of bonds that never broke, I’m thankful.
Or even bonds that sometimes broke and hearts that sometimes shattered.

For cough syrup that reminds me of my fragile body, I’m grateful.
For cream puffs and the childlike joy that follows tasting their sweetness, I’m thankful.

For books and humans’ efforts to share thoughts, for what they understand and want to immortalize by sharing with others, I’m grateful.

For learning and thinking about what I will learn and change in the future, I’m excited and thankful.

For this endless flow of “becoming” that brings me closer to myself and all existence moment by moment, I’m grateful.

And for you, who will someday read these words—whether death has come to meet me or I eagerly await it—I thank you.
When I’m gone, these words of gratitude will live on for me. 🙏

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