"Thankful"

"Somedays we forget
To look around us
Somedays we can't see
The joy that surrounds us
So caught up inside ourselves
We take when we should give.

So for tonight we pray for
What we know can be.
And on this day we hope for
What we still can't see.
It's up to us to be the change
And even though we all can still do more
There's so much to be thankful for."

This song is a Thanksgiving song from Josh Groban's Christmas CD (so basically I decided it was a Thanksgiving song). But it's basically true throughout the entire holiday season and all year. So I had to listen to it for Thanksgiving, and it started to resonate with me.

The beauty of today's holiday is that we take the time to be thankful. We stop forgetting to look around us, and we see the joy that surrounds us. We take the time to count our blessings. Part of counting our blessings is in remembering those who aren't as fortunate. It's easiest to remember our blessings by acknowledging what other people don't have. (On the contrary, we can think about what we don't have by looking at what others do have - which is what our society teaches us to do most of the time.) Counting my blessings in seeing what others don't have is something I've been learning to deal with quite a bit this semester. It leads sometimes to feelings of guilt, especially when I think about the injustices that led to the inequalities. But it's not about that. The fact is that I have been given great opportunities that others haven't. It does no good to anyone for me to feel guilty. I think Josh Groban said it well in this song when he sang, "It's up to us to be the change / and even though we all can still do more / there's so much to be thankful for." It's a double-sided challenge: (1) I have to act. I have to hope and work for the change. But (2) I have to just be thankful for what I have. And for some of the people I'm living with this semester, the biggest thing we have to be grateful for is that we have been given the opportunities to make the change, to do something to improve the world.

The world is not perfect, but it's beautiful. And today we take time to give thanks for it's imperfect beauty: our imperfect families, our imperfect friends, our imperfect opportunities. Notice how none of that is material. I don't believe materialism makes us happy. I don't know how many people really believe that things or money make us happy beyond the basic necessities like food, clothing, and shelter, and maybe a few frills. But we get so caught up in the money and the materialism. So today we step back. Today we remember the people and the opportunities and the basic necessities that we have, and we give thanks. Maybe we should do it more than once a year, but I'm grateful that we do it once a year. I believe it makes us more happy to count our blessings.

Happy Thanksgiving!
I'm thankful for YOU!

Love,
Emily