Look at the stars

Two people can live exactly the same day and experience two completely different lives.

One sees things to complain about.

The other sees opportunities to make the world better.

One complains that Monday has arrived.

The other is grateful they woke up at all.

Life is strange that way.

The quality of your life is often determined less by what happens to you and more by the lens through which you choose to see it.

This is not about pretending that suffering doesn’t exist.

Life can be unimaginably difficult at times.

People lose those they love.

Dreams fall apart.

Hearts are broken.

No amount of positive thinking changes that.

But perspective changes the person you become.

Some people spend their lives counting what they lack.

Others spend their lives counting what they have.

Some people become bitter because life isn’t perfect.

Others become grateful because they understand that perfection was never promised in the first place.

Gratitude is not something that appears when life becomes good.

It is something that makes life good.

A grateful person can find beauty almost anywhere.

In a quiet cup of coffee.

In the sound of laughter from another room.

In a long walk home through winding streets where whole lives once passed through.

Which brings us to today’s lesson.

Never allow life’s difficulties to rob you of your sense of wonder.

Train yourself to look for the beauty in the ordinary.

Look for the lesson in the pain and gain strength from it.

Look for the reasons to smile that are hiding in days we look past.

Days that we ignore.

Days that we rush through as though they were not priceless.

Life is difficult for everyone.

That part is unavoidable.

What is not unavoidable is whether you spend your one extraordinary chance at being alive staring into the gutter or looking up at the stars.

The world remains the same.

You get to choose how you will travel through it.