It’s easy to see the bad everywhere. All we have to do is look around — at him or her, at this situation or that situation, at what they have and we don’t, at where they’re going and we’re not.

It’s easy to think that someone must live a charmed life, that someone doesn’t know anything about our own burdens. It’s easy to feel robbed of opportunity, or like they were stolen by someone — maybe even someone close to us. It’s easy to feel as though we carry the weight of the world on our shoulders, and that everyone else, at most, will only carry an ounce here or there.

The truth is that our burdens are, yes, our own and ours to deal with. But everyone has their own, and the upside of a burden is the lesson it can teach, the path it can reveal and the errors that we can make right. And if there isn’t beauty in that, then we may all need to have our vision checked.

Beyond the beauty of a burden, there’s good around the opposite corner from where bad resides. There’s good from the moment we wake up each morning until the hour we go to bed. There’s good in the traffic jam that may keep you from ultimate danger. There can be good in tragedy, and in the warnings we can share with others; with the lessons we can teach our loved ones still with us.

It’s all in how we look at it. It’s all in how we choose to see it.

Tonight I am thankful for the amount of good in this world, even though we may not see it right away. I am thankful for good’s patience, and I’m grateful that it’s usually right there staring back at us just as soon as we’re ready to see it.