Gratitude Tense

Today is Thanksgiving.  I've shared this Oliver Sacks quotes a couple times before.  Here is Austin Kleon substack:

The neurologist Oliver Sacks published a handful of essays before his death that were collected in Gratitude. He wrote:

I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and travelled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

Notice that Sacks here is writing in “gratitude tense,” something you could try if you keep a diary. Start each sentence you put down with the words, “I have…”