I thank the universe for the money that flows to me.

Most of what you have came through hands you could not identify. Someone said your name in a meeting you were not in. A stranger on a panel argued for you against a colleague who preferred somebody else. A teacher taught you the thing that later became the job, and has no idea.

None of them can be thanked. The debt has nowhere to be paid, which may be why people end up addressing gratitude to something larger and unnamed.

The instinct is sound whatever you believe is at the other end. Anything that arrived through others is worth acknowledging, even when the acknowledgement has nowhere to land.