Thanksgiving

So across the big, wide ocean, y’all are celebrating Thanksgiving today.

Turkey and football and fevered Black Friday planning apart….it’s always seemed a wonderful thing to me that a country should set aside an entire day to be thankful.

I’ve been experimenting with gratitude recently.  Not the run-of-the-mill gratitude we all feel for the gestures and things which make us happy.  But gratitude for stuff I don’t necessarily feel grateful for.  Even stuff I downright resent.

And I’ve been discovering, during this experiment of mine, just how astonishingly powerful gratitude is.  How it can actually transform the way we feel; change our entire experience of a situation or relationship.

It began when I found myself idly wondering, one day, whether gratitude might operate like love.  After all, love worth its salt - solid, empowering love - is a choice: we choose to love the people closest to us - on the days when they’re driving us nuts as well as on the days when they melt our hearts.  What if gratitude operated that way, too?

I can report - conclusively - that it does.  This isn’t about denial or brainwashing.  It’s about choice.  There are always a gazillion ways to look at something.  The way we choose to look is our choice.  The way we choose to look is our truth.

Choosing to look with gratitude is proving to be an extraordinary and liberating experience.  So I’m definitely across the other side of the Atlantic in spirit today.  No turkey required.

Comments

[helen]

The way we choose to look is our choice. The way we choose to look is our truth.

Absolutely. Thank you for this great post today Helen.

[Gail Pickles]

I so agree. I find it brings a calmness, an inner strength and a smile.

[MarySunshine]

Actively being grateful and expressing gratitude and thanks daily has made such a difference in my life. People's responses are so touchingly surprised and meltingly appreciative for the notice I took of whatever they did, expressed or shared. Clearly this is not something enough of us are doing. I loved how you have expressed it today. Thanks Helen, as always for your joy and gentleness and appreciation of all things beautiful, within us and around us.