We think we see the world as it is. But we see the world as we interpret it to be, and that interpretation is everything. If we see a picture in the newspaper, and it is a woman crying in front of a burned house, and the caption says, “Woman saved by neighbor,” and we read that and realize this is a happy moment, this isn’t a tragic loss. But if we see that same story and it says, “Woman loses house,” then those tears are not of joy, and we feel immense suffering for this woman. And this subtle shift in how we see the world is everything. It is the difference between living in a gray, dark, stormy world, or realizing that there’s a rainbow peeking out at the end. It’s the difference between whether we see the good in the world or whether we only see the bad.

The fact of the matter is, we live in a world with both infinite good and infinite things that we may wish were slightly different. But we all have the choice of where we put our attention. We all have the choice of what we look at, what we focus on, and what we think about. And if we are grateful, we are looking at the flowers, we are looking at the butterflies, and the beautiful sounds and smells all around us. But if we are ungrateful and always thinking about what we don’t have and what other people have that we want, we will never see the blessings we have in our life. We will never see the bright colors in this world. We will not even know that flowers smell beautiful because we’ll never stop to take a smell.

So we really have to understand that gratitude isn’t a cause of happiness. It’s the byproduct of happiness. When we are fully present in our surroundings, and we’re not lost in our head, we see the beauty all around us, we see the blessings. And when we are always lost in our heads, when we’re always worrying and thinking, we wouldn’t even see the cutest puppy dog trying to jump up and play with us. The more we practice presence, the more gratitude we feel. And the more gratitude we feel, the brighter and more beautiful our lives become.