Akos had spent most of her life chasing what she did not have. Each morning began with a sigh, the kind that slipped out before she even realised she was unhappy. By nightfall, her thoughts often wandered to what could have been better, more money, more time, more ease, more answers. Life felt like a long list of things still missing.
Somewhere along the way, the small gifts had faded into the background. The laughter of her children echoed through the house, but she barely paused to listen. The warmth of the morning sun touched her skin, yet she hurried past it. Even the gentle knock from a neighbour bringing soup felt routine, something expected rather than cherished. Gratitude had not disappeared; it had simply gone quiet.
One still afternoon, Akos sat by the window, her hands resting idly in her lap. Outside, rain fell softly, washing dust from the leaves and darkening the earth. She watched without hurry. There was nowhere she needed to be, nothing she needed to fix. Just the rain, steady and patient.
As she listened, something inside her loosened. The rhythm of the falling drops reminded her of her mother’s voice, calm, sure, and unafraid of silence. “Akos,” her mother used to say, “when you thank life for what you have, it multiplies.”
For the first time in a long while, the words did not feel like advice. They felt like the truth.
Moved by something she could not name, Akos reached for her journal. The pages were mostly empty, much like how she had been feeling, but she began to write anyway.
I am grateful for breath.
I am grateful for the hands that prepare my meals.
For the feet that carry me through long days.
For the heart that still dares to hope, even when it is tired.
The words came slowly at first, then freely. With each sentence, the weight she carried felt lighter. Not because her problems had vanished, but because she was no longer carrying them alone. Gratitude made space. It softened the sharp edges of her worries.
She wrote about her children’s laughter again, this time with a smile. She wrote about neighbours, about rain, about mornings she had rushed through without noticing. She wrote until her hand ached, and her eyes stung with quiet tears.
That evening, nothing in Akos’s life had changed on the outside. The house was the same. The challenges were still there. But inside, something had shifted. She felt present. Grounded. Awake.
From that day on, Akos practised gratitude not as a rule, but as a language — one spoken in silence, in small moments, in noticing. She learnt that gratitude did not demand perfection. It only asked for attention.
And in learning to see her life differently, she realised this simple truth: gratitude does not give you more, it teaches you how much you already have.