“It is easy to praise providence for anything that may happen if you have two qualities: a complete view of what has actually happened in each instance and a sense of gratitude. Without gratitude what is the point of seeing, and without seeing what is the object of gratitude?” Epictetus, Discourses 1. 6. 1- 2
What blessings can I count right now?
Rather than enumerating a laundry list of blessings, saying them out loud sounds suspiciously like offering platitudes, by rote. I would rather see my blessings as each having been revealed to me at the moment that I fully understood why they are blessings. How I came to be fortune’s favorite in having them, family, health, etc., does not matter. Knowing why they are blessings, how they happened, in each “instance” as Epictetus offers, is most important. My gratitude is not for each blessing, but for the understanding of the blessing itself.
