Here we are, living these lives bright and perishable as a poppy, hard and shimmering as obsidian. We know that they are entirely improbable, that we bless their bright improbability with each flash of gratitude for it all, that if we pay attention closely and generously enough we are always repaid in gladness, that gladness is the handle of the door to the world. And yet over and over we choose to live in the cage of complaint, too preoccupied with how the will of life betrayed our wishes. Imagine parting the bars and stepping out. Imagine waking up with a rush of gladness at everything we were never promised but got anyway — trees and music, clouds and consciousness, the cobalt eye of the scallop, the golden fan of the gingko, the alabaster chandelier of the ghost pipe. In our age of competitive prostration, this is a headstand hard to hold for long. But it is trainable. It is possible to become strong enough to be tender, it is. Artist and poet Rachel Hébert offers a bright patch of training ground in The Book of Thanks: A Catalogue of Gratitudes — one of the most miraculous books I have ever encountered, trembling with tenacious tenderness for the bewilderment of being alive. Radiating from the pages is an invitation, extended in paintings and poems, to open “the sunlit fort of your attention” and let the world rush in, in all its minute and majestic loveliness: stalactites and Spanish moss, spiderwebs and skylights, snow and the call of the snowy owl, the heart’s capacity for “an urgent, flashing, interrupting kind of love.” What emerges is prayerful (“more cellos, touch, and rain, please”) and singing with praise (“roots gripping, canyon carved, spine woven of baleen a thousand years old”) — a manual for how to live in gratitude (“what is working wants your praise”) and a theological statement (“there is nothing you must do to belong”).A taste:What do we say to longing?If you have sat in the chillof early morning bleaknessand watched as the deep bluesighed and blushed, touchedby the warm curve of dawnand pinker than pink thenapricot soft and spreading itsglow, you know. You know.How— in this dim parade of brutality —might all be well?But if we trouble it with light,train our sights onthe rebellious good,and workto make ittruer.Beneath the faceof the water,wonder.In dark woods,a gate.In the chaptercalled lostness,a friend.All the helpwe could notyet see.It cannot be always comfortable.So love the thousand knives as they enterand see your shape still sitting.See that you too belong to pawsof soft silent hungers, to thirst-tangledroots, to silver-spun constellations.Know you’re no sicker than the rest of us.The big secret is this: No one else can brave you.Messy, yes. And marvelous.What is more than we seein this world we’re pressed into,its blistered barking noise?For what we build, speak, and ruin —our efforts, our angers.For music.For wings.donating = lovingFor seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation. Your support makes all the difference.newsletterThe Marginalian has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s most inspiring reading. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.