Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are not an "accident", but a divine choice. It is important to realize how often we have had chances to be grateful and not have used them. When someone is kind to us, when an event turns out well, when a problem is solved, a relationship restored, a wound healed, these are very concrete reasons to offer thanks.
What fascinates me so much is that every time we decide to be grateful, it will be easier to see new things to be grateful for. Gratitude begets gratitude, just as love begets love.
freedom always came nibbling my thought,
just as— often, in light, on the open hills—
you can pass an antelope and not know
and look back, and then— even before you see—
there is something wrong about the grass.
And then you see.
That's the way everything in the world is waiting.
~ William E. Stafford from "A Message from the Wanderer" in THE WAY IT IS