These beautiful words below come from David Whyte.

GRATITUDE is not a passive response to something given to us, 
gratitude is being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us. 
Gratitude is not something that is shown after the event, it is the deep, a priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life.

Gratitude is the understanding that many millions of things come together 
and live together and mesh together and breathe together in order for us 
to take even one more breath of air, 
that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, 
participating human being is a privilege, 
that we are part of something, 
rather than nothing.

Even if that something is temporarily 
pain or despair, 
we inhabit a living world, 
with real faces, real voices, laughter, 
the color blue, the green of the fields, 
the freshness of a cold wind, 
or the tawny hue of a winter landscape.