11.24.2010

Thanksgiving

This is the time of the year that most people start to think about what they are grateful/thankful for. After all one of the main principals of this holiday (other than the turkey!) is to ask yourself, hey what am I thankful for? What do I have thanks to give for?

My family has a small tradition that we do every year, along with our Thanksgivings prayer, each of us go around the table and say what we're thankful for. For the past couple of years, a few days before the day, I've actually had to thoroughly think about it instead of just knowing. Last year, I can't even remember what I was thankful for, honestly I almost said "nothing". Or was it the year before last? Either way, it was one of those years and it was...a really crappy one. Of course, I managed to think of something for that year.

For this year again I really am thinking it through, there is one obvious "thankful" reason, but I seriously doubt that I will say it in front of my family because it's really corny! Other than that I really can't think of many things I'm thankful for...I don't mean to sound ungrateful...life in general this past year has changed soooo fast, not just for myself but my family as well. Some things for the best, others for the worst and some things we have yet to know. It makes me question things.

When things are not good, most of us are not grateful. When things are good, we tend not to be so grateful either. I think that's one of our problems as a society. We think that we work hard everyday, we deserve all these things, so why should we even be grateful. Not realizing that there are people who have significantly less that we do, who work 10x harder than we do and yet they may not even have a bite of food to eat at night. And when things are down for us, we surely have nothing to be thankful for. We can think of ALL the problems we ever had in life and somehow connect them all together and come to the conclusion, this is why my life is so terrible. Then way later down the line, we recall the depressive state of mind that we were in and think "God, why did I make such a big deal out of that?" Are we just ungrateful as a society? Do we not know how to truly value our life? Not things but our life?

The people in our lives, the things we do have in our life. I'm not just talking about materialistic things, I'm talking about having things like water, clean water. Not having to wake up to gunfire everyday, well depending where you live. Some people have lost loved ones and just lost in general this year, yet they can find a reason to be thankful. So not why us, when you put things into perceptive, why don't some of us have at least one reason to be thankful.

I guess...what I'm thankful for is being given other chance to find and keep (knock on wood) love and to have someone sincerely loves me back. I'm grateful for my family, even though we a little torn apart, but they're still alive. Thankful for my life, even though I don't have an ultra glamorous life, with fancy cars, nice clothes, no ability to take wonderful cross country trips, but I am alive. I do have a home (two of them, not a house, a home), a family, food...

like the Rihanna & TI song says...
"what you need to do is thankful for the life that you got...stop lookin at what you ain't got and start being thankful for you do got"

So maybe when I think about it, I do have a lot of things to be grateful for, things that I truly value, even though I may not show it very well. Now this of course is not some generalzation, just some of us. I am also learning to have a deeper appreciation for life.

Now it's your turn...