Despite the changes which come into our lives and with gratitude in our hearts, may we fill our days-as much as we can-with those things which matter most. May we cherish those we hold dear and express our love to them in word and in deed.
And some of your elders remember pleasures with regret like wrongs committed in drunkenness. But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement. They should remember their pleasures with gratitude, as they would the harvest of a summer.
To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven depending on whether they compare it to something better and so feel disappointed and bitter or something worse and so feel relieved and grateful.
It's hard to anticipate. I can tell you what I'm feeling right now is that I'm busier than I expected these last two weeks. A great deal of emotion around the people that I've worked with and the gratitude I feel for the sacrifices they've made on behalf of the American people, but also on behalf of me personally.
Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. The person sitting in the shade now should be grateful for the person who planted and tended that tree. That includes all those benefactors of humanity throughout history that created, invented, financed, produced, maintained and improved all that we enjoy today.
Things which provide deep and lasting happiness and gratitude are the things which money cannot buy: our families, the gospel, good friends, our health, our abilities, the love we receive from those around us.
If we should deal out justice only, in this world, who would escape? No, it is better to be generous, and in the end more profitable, for it gains gratitude for us, and love.
I'll go to a restaurant where I've never been before, and someone will say, "I don't have anything big for you to eat." I used to be a little salty about that, but at the end of the day, what they're saying is, "I know who you are. I watch your stuff." What's better than that? Gratitude is the attitude. That's the thing. What am I being pissy about?
We can lift ourselves, and others as well, when we refuse to remain in the realm of negative thought and cultivate within our hearts an attitude of gratitude.