The Foremost Happiness

From the Stone Tarot, the Five of Cups; from the Buddhist Quote Cards, Dhammapada 15:204 :

Though we might be enjoying a lovely day, let five minutes of inconvenience or irritation intrude, and that five minutes is likely where our focus will be aimed for the rest of the day. Just as the full upright cups are in the shadows and the spilled cups are up front and evident, so we humans have a tendency to fixate on what's wrong or unpleasant in life while ignoring what is good and beautiful. This mental track that our mind habitually follows can be changed with mindfulness and patient effort, but it takes a lot of practice. The Dhammapada verse reads:

Health is the foremost possession,

contentment the foremost wealth,

trust the foremost kinship,

and release the foremost happiness.

No one would deny the importance of health, the ability to be content, and trustworthy relationships. But to be truly happy, we must also learn to let go of trying to manipulate reality until it fits our ideas of what it should look like. As the Five of Cups card alludes to, such a delusion will only keep us from seeing what is good and beautiful around us.