To understand the power of gratitude to bestow contentment, one needs only to accept that it has nothing to do with the length of your list of things you have to be grateful for. The length of that theoretical list―or even if you’ve actually made one―is quite subjective. Rather it is an attitude toward the whole of life, no matter what it brings.

She was a very old woman who knew she was soon to die. She lived her entire life in abject poverty. Her husband and two of her four children were already dead. She always had a smile and a good word.  She entrusted to me her worn-thin gold wedding band, the only thing of value she owned, and asked that something good be done with the proceeds from selling it. “I have been very blessed by God,” she said, “and my heart of full of gratitude.” She died within a month.