From a legally blind person on Quora:
Oh ABSOLUTELY! I am a very VERY happy person! Low stress, easy going…
I have a secret! And I’ll tell it to you at the end. And you don’t got to pay nuffin for it!
The main thing anyone, blind, wheelchair user, deaf/Deaf, amputee or TAB (Temporarily Able Bodied) needs to do is LEARN TO BE CONTENT!
Know that there will always be people who are smarter, stronger, faster, richer than you, and that there will always be people who are dumber, weaker, slower, poorer than you. Find your niche and decorate it! Bloom where you are planted!
I am legally blind. I COULD decide that this has blighted my economic life, my social life, destroyed me financially… which it has. Because I AM poor. I have been homeless in my life. I am now unable to afford groceries. At all. My partner and I eat at the senior Center, and depend (yes DEPEND) on the food bank.
But instead, I choose to look on the good side! We don’t have major debt (Well… maybe $15,000 for car, hospital debt etc. We’re working on it) we have a place to live (our landlord is a VERY sweet, generous, kind and wonderful man! I love him!) we have friends at church. I am losing weight! being too poor to buy cookies or potato chips has forced me to concentrate on my health, to EAT better (the food bank features LOTS of vegetables! YES!) and, in fact, I started 2016 at 250 lbs. I ENDED 2016 at 207 lbs! So not being able to buy my own food, I lost FORTY THREE POUNDS!
So yes, I AM happy! I am legally blind. That means I do NOT drive. If I want to go somewhere… I walk! I started 2016 diagnosed six months earlier as diabetic. I ended 2016 with my doctor telling me my blood glucose levels were so low, I was not only no longer in the diabetic range… I was even OUT of the PRE-diabetic range! I’m healthy again!
Can the blind be happy? YES! But it takes… exactly as it takes ALL people… sheer ATTITUDE, a thankful frame of mind, and conscious living to DO it.
Do you want to know my secret? I call it my Spiritual Scavenger Hunt and you can do it, too. Grab a rosary… or just a necklace. It doesn’t matter, just a string of beads will do, with no religious symbols. Atheists can do it.
Before going to bed, take the first bead (closest to the clasp it it’s a necklace) and think back over your day. What was a “good thing” (or if you’re religious, a “blessing”) that happened this day? Found a parking spot? Great! That’s a bead! Go to the next. Another good thing…. your kid got a B in Algebra! Bead! Next! You found a dine in the sofa!… don’t laugh. Even small, inconsequential things count! Bead! Next! The vet says Rusty doesn’t have ringworm, YAYYYY! Count it! and go on through, until you’ve run out of beads.
Can’t think of any? Eyesight! Count it! Hearing! Count it! nobody died! Count it! Give thanks for each sense, each survival, each day you didn’t get a traffic ticket COUNT IT ALL! And go to sleep thinking of all those blessings. Here are some of mine:
My five senses. And then some more. Sight (what there is) Hearing, Touch, Taste, Smell, Balance, Humor, Honor, common sense, too. Then I count beads for the miracles we live amidst. That a Sami caribou-herder in the frozen north can post a letter that will get to ANY doorstep in the whole WORLD! YES, that’s a miracle! That we go to the supermarket and there are RIVERS of food! Look down any grocery aisle! WOW! Count a bead! Keep on counting and realizing just how WONDERFUL this world IS. This is my secret, and now it’s yours. Don’t want to use beads? Use fingers and toes. the point of the exercise is to cultivate an “attitude of gratitude”.
And in this, the Age of Trump, I intend to be one of the happiest Americans ever. This is survival, folks.
You'd be correct.
I crunched a few words in whatever 60 seconds I had to typo out the above post. Typos / errors were inevitable.