My mom recently got an email from our cable company that they were doubling the speed of our Internet.

This was met with joyful skepticism, because our internet sucks. So we reset our router and modem and went about our days.

It wasn’t until later when my mom asked if the Internet was faster that I realized it actually was.

We’d only always noticed when it was slow. It was obvious because it hindered whatever Internet thing we were doing. But I’d failed to notice how great the Internet was today, because it’s easy to forget about gratitude when things go normally, without a hitch.

So I wondered, what if every time something went plain old normally, I realized the goodness in it? If we appreciated the usual things—like the fact that the sidewalk is smooth and our pens have ink and our icemaker has ice and the Internet works—imagine the joy that would constantly fill our hearts. It would be endless.

Every day would be a good day because, by ratio, it would be filled with way more good things than bad. (Spilled my coffee five minutes ago? Doesn’t matter anymore, because now I’m sitting on a bench and it’s kind of comfortable.)

And then we can start to realize how beautiful everything really is. (I took a step and didn’t fall. I drank water and it was clean. My food is food, there’s music on the radio, there’s an earthworm on the ground.)

All it takes is the choice to take notice of and be happy about the small, seemingly dumb and meaningless little things.

Once the choice is made, we realize how many things really don’t go wrong in our lives. Those things now have meaning. And once we realize that we love every simple little moment, we’ve found joy.

Love elephant and want to go steady?

Sign up for our (curated) daily and weekly newsletters!

Apprentice Editor: Jamie Khoo/Editor: Travis May

Photo: Stephanie Veronique/Pixoto