Love this. We have a family friend who has had a truly awful life, AWFUL. She has been battling one killer cancer after another for 30 years, one of her children is severely disabled, her husband had a major heart attack and they lost their home to foreclosure, and his business went bankrupt, list goes on and on and on.... But to hear this woman talk about it, her life is just one series of miracles after another. She is so content because she "knows" miracles happen all the time, and that she and her family will always be taken care of. For 20 years I just thought she was crazy (lovable, but crazy) and that her irrational optimism was a Stockholm syndrome-like coping mechanism but now that I'm older myself, I can actually see how her life HAS been hard, but it's ALSO been a wonderful series of incredible miracles, and how awesome would that be, you know? It doesn't come naturally to me, but I've been trying very hard to adopt that mindset myself and, you know what.... Our life is actually getting *better* in many measurable ways, but on the outside looking in, people feel sorry for us right now because my husband has been blacklisted from his industry, and we are in the process of selling our old house that we lovingly and painstakingly restored to be exactly what we wanted and are having to start over in a much less desirable part of the country. But somehow, this cliched "attitude of gratitude" has found us feeling more hopeful for the future than any of our current external circumstances can possibly warrant, yet here we are. Happy and blessed and grateful to have each other after all we've been through over the past 3 years... Don't knock it until you try it people.