Based on PositivelyPresent.com’s Gratitude Challenge I will reflect on some of these topics, without any particular timeline, let alone the goal to complete the whole list.

The Gratitude Challenge starts with “Words”:

Do you have a favorite word? What words mean the most to you when someone else says them? How have words impacted your world?

11th Annual Gratitude Challenge

One of my favourite words was also voted as the “most beautiful word in the world” in 2007 by a German culture institute. I know, it’s not trendy to be mainstream nowadays, but well, there’s a reason why it’s number one: Yakamoz. This single Turkish word expresses “the reflection of the moon in the water”. Whenever I think of this meaning, I can’t help but find it beautiful and soothing. Also a memorable moment of my life was in such a situation where the moon shone in its cold yet calming light.

Thinking of a nightly lake with a full moon floating atop also reminds me of the Chinese character for “lake”: 湖. If you know a bit about how to read such characters, you will know that it is composed of three radicals: water, old, and moon. It hence resembles closely the meaning of my favourite word: An old person standing calmly at the lakeside, watching how the eternal moonlight gets softly stirred by the small waves that a silent wind propelled. Yakamoz.

I’m grateful for the infinite amount of words, associated feelings and new ways of thinking that learning a new language or even just a new word in your native language brings us.