interlude

Grammos, Greece – July 2025

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

— Mary Oliver

Lunteren, Netherlands – February 2025

Gratitude is an acknowledgment of our insignificance, of our utter lack of control, of the ever looming uncertainty - against which we throw up our hands in surrender and guard whatever little comes our way with a visceral appreciation. It is a deeply felt understanding we arrive at, that nothing is promised and everything can be taken away in the blink of an eye. It is the lens through which we reconcile the unpredictability of life. It is an antidote to the arrogance of entitlement. Gratitude is not merely a feeling but an act of grounding ourselves: cherishing the little things that give us joy, and letting go of what we cannot have with grace instead of bitterness.