I listen to music. Many of the classic composers do good things for me. I don't get much from heavy metal or jazz but if I didn't get a lift from Beethoven's 8th or 9th, I would try Metallica or Duke Ellington or whoever is currently hot in jazz.
The best single tool I know for appreciating what I have and bad things I have had the luck not to have is meditation. The word can mean many things but to me, it means set a timer and sit still looking at the same point until the timer rings. It is not easy, especially for an American male. He is impatient, wants everything easy and fun and he wants it now. Right now! Over time, it gets to be a strange kind of comfortable to sit again in the same chair with the same timer ticking away, looking at the same point as before.
If you can see the point, you have sight. Not everybody does but you do. You are lucky already. You are doing well. If you can hear the timer, you have hearing, another lucky thing to have, another benefit and another source of pleasure.
So, you are sitting and you are waiting. Stand up. Cool: another thing you can do. In another 55 years, you might not be able to stand up. If you can stand up now, do that and do it slowly and appreciatively and gratefully. You can sit down and take a breath. You know some people can't take a breath, they can't swallow but if you can, score another point for you! If you are warm enough and cool enough, yay You!
If you have electricity in your house and power in your phone and a connection to the internet, you are way ahead of anything Archimedes or Newton did, despite being smarter that either of us.
It's not your fault. You try to count your blessings but you have more of them than you know. Actually, more than you CAN know. So, pep up! Smile! For people with our bank accounts, our memories and our shortcomings, we are doing totally fine.
