With Thanksgiving and the holidays quickly approaching I think I settled upon a topic that definitely needs to be discussed this time of year. The idea of being thankful and how this concept is severely lacking in our society and other societies in various parts of the world. What really got me thinking about it to be honest was a conversation that took place between myself and a friend where I discussed why it is important to compare ones life situation to other people’s situations. I tried to convey that I felt that it was important to compare my life events with other peoples life events to help me keep a realistic and healthy perspective of what I should be grateful for in my own life.
Comparisons of this sort in my mind are meant to help me and others to understand that life could be so much worse, so we should be grateful for our blessings. A good example of this type of comparison is when I compared my own childhood sexual abuse that occurred at 2 years of age with a horrific abuse story I heard just the other day. The other day as I was reading various things on the internet and I came across a news story on BBC about a two week old baby being physically raped by a 25 year old man in Britain. When I read the story I was absolutely horrified and shocked and then I found myself weeping uncontrollably as a response. After I got done crying I sat there for a long while and thought about this little baby and how it is struggling to hold onto its life. This made me realize that there is alway something to be grateful for even about my own child abuse. The reality is that I was fortunate to be abused in the way that I was, because if I had been abused in any other way I would have most likely died.
The truthful use of comparison has made me realize that our sense of entitlement in this country has grown to epidemic proportions. The reality is that a large portion of us from what I can tell have forgotten to exist with an attitude of gratitude. Even though I had grown up in poverty I will admit that I have done this myself and I want so desperately to change this dysfunctional behavior of mine. It is my goal over the next month to keep a journal and to write down at least five things that I am grateful for every single day without fail. It is my hope to break myself of this habit of complaining more than being grateful. Currently I am wondering about how much time and energy that we all might be wasting getting angry over trivial matters, because something is not exactly the way we expected. Here’s just a thought that maybe we should be grateful for the fact that we have access to these privileges at all.
After all this is the time of year when families come together more than any other time in this country and maybe this year we should have a different kind of holiday season. Maybe instead of having holidays that are filled with an orgy of materialism maybe we should have a holiday season full of gratitude and helping other instead of just ourselves. Maybe instead of creating lists of gifts we should create list of all that we are grateful for and all that we could do for our fellow man. There are so many people in the world that have it far worse than us in the states, and yes I understand that their pain does not diminish your pain, yet maybe this should inspire you to act for the better rather than complain.
As you go into this holiday season I would like everyone to think about the possible gifts that they give to every single person that they come into contact with every single day. Your gift could be a smile or a kind word or a parking space or giving donations to those in need or maybe when you want to complain maybe just keeping it to yourself. There is always something that we can be thankful for and something that we can give and most of the things that we can give cost us absolutely nothing except maybe a bit of effort. If we can teach ourselves as adults these lessons then hopefully we can teach our children as well and who knows maybe the attitude of gratitude will become contagious making the world a little bit better of a place for all of us.
Until next time…
Namaste!
Leave a Reply