So there I was at Liberty's Torch

 And Mr. Porretto puts up a little snippet from a book.  A rather famous book.  I won't excerpt it all, just this little bit:

 If we are so contemptibly selfish that we can’t radiate a little happiness and pass on a bit of honest appreciation without trying to get something out of the other person in return – if our souls are no bigger than sour crab apples, we shall meet with the failure we so richly deserve. 

Please, go read the entire post.  

Gratitude is probably one of the greatest human emotions you can ever find.  A man who is grateful for the blessings he has will, as a general rule, treat people better than those who are jealous.  A man who is grateful will be happy and content even in bad times, because he knows that he has been blessed, while those who subscribe to envy are miserable and hateful at the best times.  Cultivating gratitude is probably one of the best things you can do in your life because it changes your entire world's view, and makes you a joy to be around rather than a sour, bitter nag.

I know that I rant and rave here on ye ollde blogger, but if you were to meet me in person?  You probably wouldn't recognize me.  I try to be grateful for every little blessing that I have.  Sometimes those little blessings have been all that I have, but I'm still grateful to have them because they prevented the bad times in my life from being a miserable sink-hole of despair and anger.

Go back to my Thanksgiving post.  In order to be truly happy you must transform greed into gratitude.  Sometimes that's not easy, but it is absolutely a requirement if you want to go through life with happiness instead of a sour attitude that divorces you not only from the happiness in your life but the happiness in others lives as well.  One of the common threads amongst narcissistic people is their lack of gratitude.  They're so consumed with envy that they literally cannot be happy with someone else's good fortune.  I've worked for people like that.  I've had officers in the Army who were malignant narcissists, and they made every single person around them miserable.  While those who understood gratitude and cultivated that in their life made everyone around them not just happy but BETTER.

You might not be able to effect a massive change in the people you deal with on a daily basis.  But can you make one person smile?  With a compliment or a joke?  Can you make ONE PERSON'S life better with your interactions?

Imagine how life could be if more than 50% of the people in this country tried to do that.

Maybe you can't fix the world.  But you can improve your little part of that.  And that's something to be grateful for.