Gratitude

I am reading a beautiful book called 'One thousand Gifts' that a friend gave me as  a graduation present. It was so timely, because my new years resolution (which I'm increasingly coming to believe must become a way of life) was 'to maintain an attitude of gratitude'.  I get pretty grumpy about life sometimes.  From the poverty I've witnessed in my life, I find it really difficult to work in a beautiful holiday town where beautiful people swan in to spend lots of money on their picture -perfect holidays - leaving their holiday houses and toys to sit, un-used for the other 50 weeks a year.  They drive and dress and act like they own the town and I... can get very self-righteous and have had some very uncharitable thoughts about them. So much ugliness comes from the sense of entitlement....and I've come to see gratitude as the antidote.
Then I came across the following few paragraphs.
Variations on a theme.

'I know there is poor and hideous suffering, and I've seen the hungry and the guns that  go to war. I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that God gives. Why would the world need more anger, more outrage? How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is the joy that saves us?  Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering.  The converse does.  The brave who focus on all things good, and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents that bring fullest Light to the world. 
When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us? The clouds open when we mouth thanks.' pg 58