We can feel that life is good and that is why it is worth being grateful or instead concluding that it is a condition in which there will always be reasons to feel disgusted or upset.

Whether we take one position or another will depend on the work we do on ourselves. Is it that there are no people who always feel grateful while others tend to be complaining, dissatisfied and bad-tempered? Or perhaps, to ourselves, does it not happen to us that we forget to thank, while we turn at that moment to the complaint and the unjustified discomfort?

When we evaluate life, some things that we think or say have to do with the events themselves, with the facts: "this happens to me, this bothers me or this seems good to me, I'm going to keep doing it, I'm going to stop doing it ... " It is, therefore, appropriate to observe and comment on the facts since, if we manage to have an adjusted perception of them, we can also change them when necessary. But very often we complain and this is not so much a product of the world of objective reality but of our a posteriori valuations of the facts themselves: we can turn a cloudy day into an "ugly" day, into an annoying person in our worst enemy, maybe we evaluate ourselves as the "worst", the most imperfect or deficient,

But then, if complaining is so bad: why do we complain? The complaint is a habit that feeds itself permanently because we are afraid of being in the present, of accepting what we are, of not wanting to be what we are not. The ego fears change, fears the open space or the vacuum that occurs when we are not inhabiting the discomfort. We have learned to complain and we no longer know how to live without doing it: the world is always owing something to me, we conclude. The habit of complaining floods our mind with useless discontent filling our days like a container in which there is no room for more than complaints, therefore, neither enjoyment nor gratitude enters there.

To verify if this is so, it is enough to observe that many who have everything are not happy, while others who do not have much are happy. What would be the difference? That the seconds are grateful. And what shows these facts? That happiness depends on our attitude and that this is accessed when we do not make it depend on what happens to us or stop us from happening at the moment.

What can we do then? First of all, understand that gratitude is not an action that consists in saying always thanks to others. When we say thanks we usually do it for the other, but when we feel gratitude we not only benefit ourselves, but we exercise an action whose consequences have repercussions on the whole environment, returning one and a thousand times to us again.

Then, gratitude is a practice, which unlike more complex ones, you can start doing it right now. It is a practice because it depends on the exercise of our discernment, it depends on our learning to be in the present, to be aware, attentive, and this allows us to dissolve the illusion of our own ego, the ego that is made of the past, which is based on what we did, in what we suppose we are, in the identity that we set and that does not allow us to be otherwise. But ... Who says who we really are? If the ego dissolves, nothing can ask for itself, or demand, or long for things other than what we have and are in the present, we will be accepting the opportunity of enjoyment. What opportunity? The change and the potential for change is the wealth that is blocked when we complain.

It is important than to stop and think about how, when and how much we are capable of being grateful for being grateful is synonymous with being happy. 

Patricio Varsariah