I am grateful that I can see the beauty and goodness in everything around me.

Noticing beauty is a trained ability, not a temperament. Give someone a camera for a month and they start seeing shadows on brickwork they'd walked past for years. Nothing changed outside; a filter got installed.

The same goes for goodness. People who keep finding decency in others usually aren't luckier in their acquaintances — they've built the habit of looking, so they catch small evidence that everyone else's eyes slide over.

The capacity can be built, and it can be lost, depending on what you practice.

Today, look for one well-made thing. A joint in a piece of furniture, a sentence, a handshake.