A Subconscious Substance of Gratitude

There is at the back of all our lives an abyss of light, more blinding and unfathomable than any abyss of darkness; and it is the abyss of actuality, of existence.  Of the fact that things truly are, and that we ourselves are incredibly and sometimes almost incredulously real.  It is the fundamental fact of being as against not being; it is unthinkable, yet we cannot unthink it, though we may sometimes be unthinking about it; unthinking and especially unthanking.  For he who has realized this reality knows that it does outweigh, literally to infinity, all lesser regrets or arguments for negation and that under all our grumblings, there is a subconscious substance of gratitude…..

Creation was the greatest of all Revolutions.  It was for that, as the ancient poet said, that the morning stars sang together; and the most modern poets, like the medieval poets, may descend very far from that height of realization and stray and stumble and seem distraught; but we shall know them for the Sons of God, when they are still shouting for joy.  This is something much more mystical and absolute than any modern thing that is called optimism; for it is only rarely that we realize, like a vision of the heavens filled with a chorus of giants, the primeval duty of Praise.

– by G. K. Chesterton, in Chaucer