I am doomed to a life of misery. Nothing is more certain. At two o'clock this morning, tossing in bed, I was convinced this was true. Plagued with fears of a desolate future. Haunted by regrets. I was catastrophising. I couldn't reason or distract my way out of the tailspin. Sleep was out of the question. But by 3am I was sleeping like a baby. And I woke later feeling fresh and inspired. What changed? What lead me from that nightmarish path to a delightful one? The short answer is: Gratitude. Against the magnetic pull of consuming fear, I found a glimmer of gratitude. A spark. Just enough. A sliver of light opened and I dived in - following a trail of things I'm grateful for. The spiral down became a spiral up. And the fear dissipated. So, there you go. Gratitude dissolves fear. Good to know. But this is not a story about the power of gratitude - although that is a great story to tell. This is a story about the power of education. Where is the value in a book? In a land and time where slavery existed, the slave owners hid their money in books. Their illiterate slaves never thought to look there. The slaves were blind to the books. Not only the money, but all the riches in those pages were invisible to them. Those riches may as well not have existed. Were the books valuable? Astonishingly valuable. Freedom itself might have been found there. But only in the hands of a literate person. In illiterate hands, all a book is good for is burning, or propping up a wobbly table. A book holds latent potential. An educated mind unlocks it. In the absence of an educated mind, that potential may as well not exist. In fact, it appears not to exist. In a way, it doesn't exist. And so it is with everything. Education reveals the invisible We can only recognise potential according to our level of ability. If we don't have the skill, we can't see the potential. Having skill and recognising potential are inseparable. The engineer envisages a bridge where others only see an impassable river. The artist sees radiant beauty where others see only a humdrum reality. Lionel Messi sees space where there appears to be none. Skill makes the impossible, possible. It makes the invisible, visible. It sees value in what seemed valueless. The spectacular material success of human civilisation is rooted in education - in skill. This wonderous modern world was unimaginable to our ancestors. The potential was there, but they couldn't see it. Through education, we've made the impossible possible. We've made the invisible visible. Don't blame the book for our illiteracy You would think this success would make us slow to condemn anything: "Is it really useless, or do I just need more skill to see its value?" And yet, we are quick to judge the apparently mundane, meaningless and unpleasant situations in our lives. The boring commute. The annoying colleague. The terrifying 2am vision of the future. We are sure there is no potential there for anything good. Are we right? Is the boringness real? The annoying-ness? The scariness? In a way, they are real. In the same way that a book is useless... when we can't read. That's the way my future was dismal at 2am,... when the potential for gratitude was there, but invisible to me. Thankfully, by 3am I found a way to see it. Thankyou Mindfulness! So I triumphed over my demons this morning. Will I conquer them next time - or when bigger challenges come calling? Maybe. Maybe not. It depends on my skill. But guess what I was most grateful for as I emerged from those nightmarish visions into the blessed light of day? It was not the roof over my head, and a full stomach... or having a beautiful son and loving family... although I was grateful for those things. It was not on-line streaming or Google maps. It was not God, Jesus, or the Buddha. I was most grateful for the study and practice of Mindfulness. A drowning man doesn't long to be safe. He longs for something to save him - a secure hand, a lifesaver, a rescue helicopter, the ecstatic joy of his toe touching solid ground beneath him. This morning, my Mindfulness training gave me that. Because of that training, gratitude was within my reach. I could see through the fear just enough to recognise and appreciate the blessings in my life. And on another day, when darkness rises and the demons close in, it will still be Mindfulness training that I turn to for hope. Because things are only ever as dark as my inability to see.