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I actually wanted to come back to this reply specifically, because It is something that I didn't flesh out in the original thread, which was primarily focused on our affective relationships with objects in the context of "sparking joy." This reply hits the nail on the head.
In the context of Shinto metaphysics, we're always in relation (or transaction) with the objects in our care, in our environment. This relationship is fundamentally ethical because not only do we care for the things we use, the things we use care for us.
"Care for," shouldn't be interpreted in an anthropocentric kind of way, but in the ways in which our engagement with objects is transactional: if we treat the object with care, the object will return that favor through the relationship established when we learn to use the object.
Learning to use the object is key here as we can think of objects resisting us when we don't know how to properly relate to the object: books are "difficult," we "struggle" with concepts, vehicles "fight" us. All of these are indications of the relationships we have with objects.
The thing here is that if we treat the object with care, as if the object had its own kind of interiority, then we come to understand the object through our engagement with it. "Difficult" texts become our most treasured companions, as an example.
That said, recognizing the "interiority" of an object is part of what earned Shinto the misnomer of being "animistic" for a large portion of the west's engagement with Shinto particularly if we think about the "interiority" of an object as its kami, it's "essence."
(Shout out to Chapter 7 of Dewey's Experience and Nature re: difficult texts that have become a treasured companion.)
Our favorite tools are the ones that, together with them, enable us to take action. These are all relationships predicated on an ethical treatment, a caring treatment of the object, and not simply the object as a dead, lifeless thing towards which we have no responsibility.
A tool comes alive, becomes our favorite when, through the transaction with the tool, we come to recognize the ways in which we're in relation to it and how a mode of relating with the tool helps us to work together with the tool.
That said, @digiwonk is absolutely right that recognizing the affective potential of objects in the world carries with it an ethical obligation towards those objects, a kind of compassion if you will, that allows object to "spark joy," or any other affect we might name.
To this end, to ask us to "thank" an object, or to express gratitude to an object, or even recognize that the object "sparks" an emotion is to ask us to adopt a different kind of relationship to the objects that we engage with, one that requires more of us.
And, again, many of us act this way towards our objects already, without subscribing to this form of metaphysics. If we needed a demonstration of this, we could just ask ourselves why we have "favorite" tools, clothes, mundane objects. What is it that elevates these objects?
What we'll find is the answer lies in the relationship we adopt towards the object, or how we are in transaction with the object, that marks an object as a "favorite" or treasured. Put simply, it's in how the object "sparks" an affect through our relationship with it.
