“Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,
"You owe me."

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.”

― Hafiz

Some thoughts on the meaning of Gratitude. It is a virtue we can cultivate, but it has to be cultivated in concert with kindness. They each need the other to be authentic expressions that come from our true selves, from the heart. Here are the thoughts of Thanissaro Bhikkhu, a prominent Buddhist monk and teacher, who states that there are "three things most likely to make gratitude heartfelt.

You’ve actually benefited from another person’s actions.
You trust the motives behind those actions.
You sense that the other person had to go out of his or her way to provide that benefit.

"Points one and two are lessons that gratitude teaches kindness: If you want to be genuinely kind, you have to be of actual benefit—nobody wants to be the recipient of “help” that isn’t really helpful—and you have to provide that benefit in a way that shows respect and empathy for the other person’s needs. No one likes to receive a gift given with calculating motives, or in an offhand or disdainful way.

Points two and three are lessons that kindness teaches to gratitude. Only if you’ve been kind to another person will you accept the idea that others can be kind to you. At the same time, if you’ve been kind to another person, you know the effort involved. Kind impulses often have to do battle with unkind impulses in the heart, so it’s not always easy to be helpful. Sometimes it involves great sacrifice—a sacrifice possible only when you trust the recipient to make good use of your help. So when you’re on the receiving end of a sacrifice like that, you realize you’ve incurred a debt, an obligation to repay the other person’s trust."