diminishing perspectives, from the woman she was to the girl she had been.

She had been quite unconscious of the slow transformation in her habits of
thought. It is so in life. One toils up the thickly wooded hillside, intent
only on the footing, and comes suddenly on a high clearing, overlooking
valley and path, defining a new horizon.

"I never had the best of everything, Mrs. Grey," she said. "Nobody has.
Every life and every situation in life has its bad conditions--and its good
ones. I haven't had any more happiness--nor trouble than most people. It
strikes me things are pretty equally divided. We only think they aren't
when we don't know all about it. We see the surface of other people's
lives, not their private drawbacks or compensations. There are always both.
But other people's troubles are so much easier to bear than our own, their
good luck so much less deserved and qualified! With all I had as a girl I
didn't have contentment. And now, with all I lack, I don't know any one
with whom I'd change places."

What was the use with Mrs. Grey?

But alone, the thought kept widening ring after ring: How little choice
there was of conditions in life; how fortune tends to seek its level; how
one man has the meat and another the appetite; and another, without either,
can find in the fact the flavor of a joke or chew the cud of reflection
over it. Of the three, Bessie thought she would rather be the one with the
disposition. But that could be cultivated. Look at hers! Circumstances had
started it in a sort of aside, but she would take the hint.

The cure for dissatisfaction was to recognize one's balance of good.