Once President Roosevelt's house was broken into and lots of things were stolen. Hearing this, one of Roosevelt's friends wrote to him and advised him not to take it to his heart so much.

 

President Roosevelt wrote back immediately, saying, "Dear friend, thank you for your letter to comfort me.  I'm all right now.  I think I should thank God. This is because of the following three reasons: firstly, the thief only stole things from me but did not hurt me at all; secondly¹, the thief has stolen some of my things instead of all my things; thirdly, most luckily for me, it was the man rather than me who became a thief…"

 

It was quite unlucky for anyone to be stolen from. However, President Roosevelt had such three reasons to be so grateful. This story tells us how we can learn to be grateful in our life.

 

Being grateful is an important philosophy of life and a great wisdom. It is impossible for anyone to be lucky and successful all the time so long as he lives in the world. Smile and so will it when you cry to it. If you are grateful to life, it will bring you shining sunlight.  

 

We should learn how to face failure or misfortune² bravely and generously and to try to deal with it.  If so, should we complain about our life and become frustrated³ and disappointed ever since then or should we be grateful for our life, rise again ourselves after a fall?

 

If you always complain about everything, you may own nothing in the end.  When we are successful, we can surely have many reasons for being grateful, but we have only one excuse to show ungratefulness if we fail.

 

I think we should even be grateful to life whenever we are unsuccessful or unlucky. Only by doing this can we find our weakness and shortcomings when we fail. We can also get relief and warmth when we are unlucky. This can help us find our courage to overcome the difficulties we may face, and receive great impetus⁴ to move on. We should treat our frustration⁵ and misfortune in our life in the other way just as President Roosevelt did.  We should be grateful all the time and keep having a healthy attitude to our life forever, keep having perfect characters and enterprising spirit. Being grateful is not only a kind of comfort, not an escape from life and nor thinking of winning in spirit like Ah Q. Being grateful is a way to sing for our life which comes just from our love and hope. 

 

When we put a small piece of alum into muddy water, we can see the alum can soon make the water clear. If each of us has an attitude of being grateful, we'll be able to get rid of impulse⁶, upset, dissatisfaction and misfortune.  Being grateful can bring us a better and more beautiful life. 

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