Thank you, World.

"So Thank You again - because I don't say it enough" - read the first message that I woke up to. And, that made my day.

The state of being grateful for what you have in hand, now, is intensely therapeutic. Instead of waking up to a new year with the urge to do more, achieve more, and get more, you just get up and feel grateful for what you have in hand.

The next thing I read, as I clicked on habitually for my daily dose of NYT

The article written on Dec 31, was saying the same thing.

Synchronicity? Maybe.

Gratitude practices are popular for good reason; if you make one a habit, the associated mental and physical benefits include reduced symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress and (probably relatedly) improved biomarkers for heart health.

"But if you keep up a gratitude practice long enough, you may find yourself expressing your appreciation for the same things over and over, almost out of a sense of obligation. You are grateful for your friends and family. You are grateful that you have enough food. You are grateful for having a place to live. Eventually, the practice can begin to feel less nourishing and more like a chore"

So I looked back over the past year.

During the month of Kartik (the 8th month of the Hindu calendar), I light this lamp (Akash Deep) attached to a Neem Tree for my parents and grandparents. This tradition of showing lights is for the passage of your ancestors. The year was special because I lost my mother and now I am all alone. No parents, no siblings.

But I am so grateful to my ancestors, for showing me the light to return to my roots in Village Chauddhachuli. It is a priceless gift, this land, which is teaching me so much every day.

I am also grateful to my pack of swans, ducks, and roosters for keeping me company in the days when life seemed so futile. I felt lost. Torn between my intensely personal experiments with "Spirituality" and my collective move to start a business around "Sustainability", I would reflect on the myriad failures blocking the road ahead.

The swans kept me company on such days. They are such a delight to watch when they run around with wings spread, throwing all caution to the winds. So eternally grateful to them.

It is to my TREES to whom I am most grateful this year. Tired of all the gloom and doom talk about the warming planet, we planted trees with a passion over the past two years. I dreamt of being lost in my jungle growing around the house that I now live in. See how they are growing now. The old bamboo grove shoots up in the background, the Shirish trees provide the canopy of shade in the middle and the almond trees drape the foreground. It is a magical experience to watch trees grow. The feeling of joy to see them respond to your touch and conversations is unsurpassable. So thank you all dear trees.

We live in a dystopian world, on a planet with extreme weather conditions creating climate refugees, that people fail to recognize; in a society increasingly divided on wealth and access to growth, increasingly polarized and intolerant of the other's ideologies, fuelled by power-crazy politicians' territorial wars, increasingly suspicious of everything good, increasingly driven to consume, increasingly jingoistic, and increasingly futile to make sense of with the growth of machine intelligence.

What gives us the power to wade through the mess, is the power of simple joys and gratitude.

The NYT article concludes on a positive note:

and I say,

Thank you, World.