I have read that gratitude is a healthy and powerful feeling. Granted I am not going to be conscious of my good fortune all the time. We just found out that our freezer isn't freezing and right now I don't feel grateful about that development. I do realize that I have innumerable things to be grateful for, with a whole bunch right in this moment: like sight and comfort and friends and the internet and tons more.
I am listening to Jack Kornfield's "The Inner Art of Meditation". He gives little stories and anecdotes and a recent one was about the Muslim jokester and wise fool Nasruddin. A old man had seen everything already and grown quite bored with life. He put his belongings in a bag and began wandering in search of something new and interesting. Nasruddin met him on the road and asked where he was going. "I am bored with everything and I am in search of something interesting," the old man said. Nasruddin grabbed his bag and ran off into the forest. He circled around and came back to the road ahead of the old man. He put the bag in the middle of the road and hid behind a tree. The old man came along, saw his bag and with a shout of joy, ran up and grabbed it. Nasruddin said,"It takes very little to be happy."
