We spend too much time trying to make life better and not enough living it as it is. You didn’t decide where, when, or to whom you were born. You did not decide how tall, smart, or outgoing you would be by natural temperament. In fact, most things that we love or hate about ourselves and others are the kinds of things we didn’t choose, have little to no ability to change, and which have no inherent capacity to make us enjoy or fail to be able to enjoy that portion of life we can access.
There is a way of going about this particular rebuke/encouragement that lists all the things that one could have taken away or been born without, but I agree with whoever said that comparison is the thief of joy. If we are to have joy, it is to be our joy. It is a poor man who feels the warm sun on his face as he runs and thanks God that he isn’t crippled. So, too, is the blind man who considers the vegetable his only succor. Empathy is for the sake of others, not a pacifier of our ingratitude.
Let us, then, not so much count our blessings as live by their enjoyment. Our whole lives ought to be a living sacrifice to God, full of love for Him and all of His image bearers, beasts, and begonias. Pride is the root of all sin and it is inherently a sin of comparison. Our sins are always committed against Persons, persons, or even our own person, so they are invariably attempts to get for ourselves what we do not currently have or to keep what we currently have from being taken from us, often by other people doing likewise. These desires are indexed to relative, not objective, standards of wellbeing and flourishing.
You did not earn your life, you cannot sustain it forever, and much of what you consider it to be requires things over which you have no control. Relinquish, then, striving after the wind and be filled with the Spirit, who is like the wind. This does not mean to abandon agency, intentionality, planning, or care. No, it is only by refusing to kick against the goads that one is able to maximally enjoy the good gifts of God and to act with wisdom, prudence, and integrity in His world.
If you cannot enjoy the moment because it is _____ or isn’t _____, then that inability is just about the only thing you must change. You may be able to change some of those blanks, but the time you spend changing them is one less moment you have to enjoy life and, if we are honest with ourselves, the outcome is never so predictable, contextually similar to the offending situation, or experienced by us—who constantly change—in a fashion so as to make the attempt likely to succeed, in most situations.
If you must stop a rapist, help an old lady across a busy street, comfort a terrified child, recuperate from an illness, or any other thing which might seem necessary, best, or even just particularly desirable and edifying, know that such things just are life and can be enjoyed without needing to find an ultimate end to justify their being done. God has made us such that we must evacuate our bowels, so feel no guilt, shame, or frustration on the commode.
I’ll end by saying that my wife and I raise our kids to live well when they get what they want and when they don’t. Neither is more or less important. Contentment, gratitude, and joy are precisely the kinds of things that can only be had when they can always be had. When we commit to them, nothing can rob us of them and no part of life—or lack thereof—can make the suffering we will encounter under the sun and this side of glory so onerous that the only solution is to do what only God can.