ALT-1 Giving thanks
I know I should give thanks more often, like maybe every day. Just as I know that despite my inability to always see them, there are things I could and should be giving thanks for. But I think I’m like so many others in that giving thanks is something easy to forget when there are always other things that command my attention. Things like little annoyances, or problems, or how life sometimes seems so damned hard, even though I know, somewhere deep back in the recesses of my mind, that it’s a lot harder for a lot of other people.
I do give thanks for the woman in my life; my wife. The lady that reminds me without ever having to say a word, that I have more things to be thankful for, than I like to admit sometimes. I give thanks for the health of my kids too, and sometimes mine, though I complain, if only inwardly about the general downward trend towards decrepitude. I find myself wishing I felt better, far more often than I hear myself being grateful that I don’t have cancer, or diabetes or any of those other things that seem so much worse than my little nuisance problems.
I give thanks at Thanksgiving too, probably like a lot of other people. It’s kind of hard to not when they name a whole holiday after it, and how it sort of keeps coming up. But I’m grateful that we have such a holiday to remind me to be thankful for the things I do have, because it makes me feel good about myself when I do so. Plus, it makes my wife proud of me, and me her.
It’s hard to not give thanks at Christmas too, and sort of at New Years, because when that particular chime goes, off, it’s hard to not notice that you’ve been around another year, which is sort of a gift I guess, as opposed to not.
I think giving thanks is a way of reminding yourself that things could be worse, unless of course you’re religious and you’re just thanking God for the things you’ve been given. But it’s also a way of showing other people that you are aware of more than just those things you gripe about all that time; that you do see the good in them and in other things, and that probably makes them happy. So, that seems like it ought to be reason enough to do it more than just occasionally.
