People keep score. We note when blessed. We can note when insulted. There is but one route to take in order to maintain happiness. This would be to walk the street of gratitude.
Thankfulness could be regarded by some to be a weak, flowery rather no-spine kind of word. Silly old men and Sunday School women would use this term to give a puny word of greeting...sorta. Yet, being thankful is a monster of power to reverse the lives of...well...the lives of each of us.
Gratitude sees possibility when threat approaches. It senses the yes of an incoming no. A thankful person has a relaxed face while the gripey one has the look of a bulldog scowl. Joy changes sour dispositions. Not pills first. Not assignments first. Not running away and hiding first. The sheer self-starting act of determining to be happy in each and every circumstance makes one new day by day.
Many dispositions should and can and will be adjusted by a simple switch in the mind; that one unit we control. Others never make us unhappy. Oh, how it does seem at times that they try. But, we decide whether to move forward or melt. We carry the power to endure or else give up. Others have no military arsenal to force us to regard each kind of moment as anything other than one of mighty happiness.
Filmmaker Roco Belic believes that the shortcut to happiness is gratitude.
At age eighteen he was a part of a group raising funds for war-torn Mozambique. He marveled that the refugees who had lost everything were neither miserable nor angry. Instead they were just beaming with life, ecstatic at the smallest and tiniest things: seeing a ballpoint pen, looking at a magic trick, seeing us run around carrying each other on our shoulders. They had a genuine spark of joy that seemed to be missing in a lot of my friends back home.
Contrastingly, Belic later noted that by living in Hollywood he experienced quite the opposite. Surrounded by talented and very good-looking, healthy movie stars there seemed to be a stark absence of happiness. His conclusion is that these had forgotten the joy value of connection with those around them.
When one walks the streets of gratitude, life unfolds in a most wonderful way. Tensions ease. Hope evolves. Life seems to really live. We get this by having the mind of Christ....I Corinthians 2:14-16.
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