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.

VISTAS

   I was thinking about how humans are symbolizing animals. Culturally, we've created huge symbol systems - God and morality to name two of the most complex. "God" is made up many symbols - rituals and sacred books, houses of worship, the tenets of faith, rules and regulations - each of them symbolizes particular ways of being and belief and all of them are multiplied mind-boggling times all around the world. Morality is fluid with symbols that are always evolving - ideas of "right" and "wrong and should" (two very complex symbols) mean different things to different people and are always subject to change. 
     But there are much smaller symbols up and down the symbolic ladder; every time we use something as small as a word, we're using a symbol. We have a symbol for that thing with legs and a flat top - table - but "table" is arbitrary, simply something we've agreed to call that particular thing. It could easily be called Fred and if it was we'd see the thing with legs and a flat top. For each of us, "table" gives rise to an image in the mind but I have no way of knowing if our concepts of "table" exactly agree. I may see a dining table; you may see a coffee table, while others may see a very long line of "tables." It isn't the table that arises in our minds; it's the concept, the symbol of "table," which has individual and private connotations for each one of us. Also, we may not picture anything at all when we hear or read (a purely symbolic activity, nothing but words giving rise to images and ideas) "table". We're so familiar with what it is that we don't need to stop and visualize anything at all, at least not consciously. It's like not actually reading the names of characters in a Russian novel; after a while, we don't see a name or even a group of letters and we still know exactly who is speaking or being discussed..
     All that is an unnecessarily complex prelude to the simple reason I was thinking about symbols in the first place: my love of vistas. When I stand looking out at a wide vista, I immediately feel expansive, exalted, have a certain sense of grandeur that only comes for me from the widest possible view. Time stops as I look out and I can feel how eager I am to take it all in, to note every last thing about the landscape and the color and the light, and I can gaze with time stopped until I feel full.
     "Vista" has become a powerful metaphor (a symbol) for me. Alone in my room or just moving through the day, I can think "vista" and feel an echo of what I've felt at the brink of a high cliff, the top of any mountain, even the 35th floor of a building with an unobstructed view. "Vista" helps me step back for a higher perspective on myself. It sets off something optimistic and connected in me, an energy that wants to go forward, to embrace the most encompassing view of all my possibilities. "Vista," what it symbolizes to me, sets off the feeling of freedom.
     Everyone has their individual metaphors and symbols. For some it's the ocean while others see the forest or a still blue lake and idiosyncratic others I can't even guess at. The important thing is that we nourish these symbols of aspiration, allow them to put us in touch with our best nature as they expand our sense of self. They become one of the most inspiring elements of change.