if we wish to become cheerful optimistic and hopeful if we wish to eradicate
negativity pessimism and gloom from within ourselves what can enable us to
do this all we need to do is to count our blessings and we have so many of
them agreed there are deficiencies in our life
everybody is cup is half empty but how can we forget that it is also half full
tell a child thank your father for all that he has done for you the child says
he is doing his duty his father did it for him he is doing it for me what is
the big deal this is ingratitude in the same way we too have received so much
the eyes with which we see the ears with which we hear the earth we walk upon the
air that we breathe the food that we eat you see unhappiness is not a reality it
is only the way we think and happiness is only a shift in her emotions to be
happy remember all the different gifts that we have received and to feel
gratitude in our hearts for them now you may say Swamiji what ultimately
have I received let me tell you the story of one man who was always whining
about the deficiencies in his life until one day an itch started in his eyes that
completely transformed his perspective he went to the doctor and the doctor
diagnosed it as a cancerous growth for which the eyeballs would have to be
removed otherwise the growth would spread in his body
this man was shattered on the appointed hour he entered the surgery ward with
this thought that when I come out I will have no eyes however when the doctor
entered his eyes he found out that it was just a rare fungus behind the retina
he cleaned it up and stitched back his eyes finally when this man's bandages
were opened he discovered that he could still see now he was thankful to God for
the gift of sight we have received these two instruments fitted with a hundred
million receptors each with the help of which we can enjoy the glory of the
crimson sky in the Setting Sun relished the majesty of an eagle in flight
enjoying the entire spectrum of seven colors of that aesthetic rainbow like
that we have received so many wonderful blessings let's turn
our attention to the end and then as we stop whining about the cup that is half
empty we will be so overwhelmed by the half-full gifts we have in our life that
we will find a hundred million reasons to be cheerful to be optimistic to be
enthusiastic so let us start a wave of gratitude not only for ourselves but in
the entire world the community around us let us offer this wonderful gift to our
near and dear ones enable them to become cheerful by remembering their blessings
by feeling gratitude and thereby creating a ripple of the wave of
gratefulness which will spread true from the individual to the family to the
community to the entire world and bring about a paradigm shift in the way we
feel the way we think and the way we become
by exercising this muscle of gratitude in the etheral heart that we all possess
I invite you to feel the maximum grateful you can and to bestow this gift
upon your near and dear ones
you