CHERISH AND GRATITUDE

A friend and I were talking the other day about the difference between cherish and gratitude. Cherish is a verb, it's something you do, while gratitude is a noun; it's something you feel, a quality, something you can express or demonstrate.
     Cherish is a word I don't hear very often anymore. Maybe it's too intense for our cool culture. There's nothing ironic or cynical about it, no wink-wink. In fact, to cherish something or someone, to feel deeply, is the opposite of irony. It's the opposite of "whatever," which is another way of saying, I don't care. To cherish is to care deeply. When you say you cherish, you're  acknowledging that something is vital to you in a way that has nothing to do with dependence. Cherishing is a verb of pleasure and to cherish is to be enlarged.
     If I don't hear "cherish" much anymore, I can't get away from "gratitude." The word is used so much -"practice gratitude" - it's bordering on the cliche. I googled gratitude and clicked on images. Many came up and most of them looked like they'd be perfect on a greeting card. Maybe that's what always happens. Something that begins as heartfelt get co-opted, is used to make a profit and so stripped of real meaning.
     But here's the thing. I think of gratitude as the aristocrat of emotions because when I feel it deeply I have a sense of grandeur, a wide expansiveness, a going out from myself and touching the world. When that happens "gratitude" loses its meaning, all words loose their limiting meaning and become the doorway to the universal. The veil between me and everything else that exists is pulled away. I am totally connected.
     Here is some irony. We have only words to describe these transcendent experiences to ourselves and to each other. We have only words to take us to the place that's about the absence of words.