1 Life 1 Chance

Today, be grateful. Be grateful for your favorite music, for movies that make you feel good, for your phone that connects you with people, for your computer, and for the electricity that lights up your life. Be grateful for air travel that flies you everywhere. Be grateful for the roads and traffic lights that keep the traffic in order. Be grateful for your pet, for your child, for your loved ones, for your eyes that enable you to read this. Be grateful for your imagination. Be grateful that you can think. Be grateful that you can speak. Be grateful that you can laugh and smile. Be grateful that you can breathe. Be grateful that you are alive! Be grateful that you are You! Be grateful that there are two words that can change your life. Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

~ Rhonda Byrne

There is a story of Timurlenk, the great Mogul emperor, a man whom destiny had intended to be great. Yet he was not awakened to that greatness. One day tired of the strife of daily life and overwhelmed by his worldly duties, he was lying on the ground in a forest waiting for death to come and take him. A dervish passed by and saw him asleep and recognized in him the man that destiny had intended to become a great personality. The dervish struck him with his stick and Timurlenk woke up and asked, 'Why have you come to trouble me here? I have left the world and have come to the forest. Why do you come to trouble me?' The dervish said, 'What gain is there in the forest? You have the whole world before you. It is there that you will find what you have to accomplish, if only you realize the power that is within you.' He said, 'No, I am too disappointed, too pessimistic for any good to come to me. The world has wounded me. I am sore, my heart is broken. I will no longer stay in this world.'

True and lasting inner peace can never be found in external things.
It can only be found within in.
And then, once we find and nurture it with ourselves,
it radiates outward.

~ Buddha