We human beings have a peculiar habit. We sit down at the kitchen table, a pen or pencil in hand, and decide to take inventory of our lives—often by drawing up two neat columns: things to feel bad about and things to feel good about. It sounds so reasonable, so tidy almost mathematical. We Assign different weights and values to the line items of 'our' possessions and experiences. Once we are done, we look at a dozen or so items and use those line items to decide if it is logical to feel.. rich or poor in the moment.
Yet, to even begin such a list, one must first commit a most remarkable act of amnesia—voluntarily or not. You must forget about the infinity of miracles humming all around you. You must overlook the impossible chain of events that led to the pencil in your hand: the tree that swayed in the wind for decades, drinking sunlight and rain; the human ingenuity and yes, the anxious persistence—that felled that tree, milled it, shaped it into paper; the centuries of invention that created graphite, ferrules, erasers, and the very idea of writing.
To feel justified in your grievances, you must first turn a blind eye to the sheer improbability of your own existence: the fact that the atoms composing your body were born in the heart of a star; that the sunlight pouring through your window has traveled ninety-three million miles just to warm your skin.
Our society rarely calls your attention to this. Why? Because the machinery of commerce prefers you to feel incomplete. If you knew, in your bones, that you already lived in a magic land of miracles, the billboards and jingles might lose their spell. Capitalism thrives on the whispered suggestion that something is missing and it just so happens they’re selling it.
So, by all means, make your list of grievances if you must. But beside it, write another list—a list of miracles. And when the two are side by side, you may find the balance tips toward a quiet, unshakable gratitude, and you will wonder why you ever needed the first list at all.

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