My name is Sam, and I often have a hard time living 'thanksgivingly'.
We have all certainly heard the now-clichés about counting our blessings, and living with an 'attitude of gratitude', or how we all have more to be thankful for than we realize, such as every breath we breathe and every day we wake up again to see the sun rise.
But like any 'cliché', it only is a cliché in the first place because it touches on a fundamental truth about our lives as people (and yes, I am aware as I write this that even that statement has become a cliché in its own right).
There is something to be said for the way in which you begin to approach every situation in life when you choose to operate from a place of gratitude, rather than the typical ignorance or indifference. When I say ignorance or indifference, I am not speaking here of being ignorant or indifferent, but rather of the typical 'ignoring' of the 'little things', or the general non-acknowledgement which so often accompanies our responses to life. See, it's not that we're necessarily ignorant, or particularly indifferent... It's just that we don't tend to live our lives with those 'little blessings' in the forefront of our minds, shaping the way we perceive the world (i.e. presumably prompting us to more positive, grateful responses). Then again, perhaps the fact that we don't live with those things front-and-center to a greater extent does make us ignorant and indifferent...at least in regards to life's blessings.
I've found it to be an extremely positive exercise (when I take the time to do it, which, unfortunately, is not nearly often enough) to write down, in any given moment, the things I am thankful for right then and there. No matter how small, no matter how big. No matter if I've written that thing on the list before, no matter if I've written it a thousand times. There is something about naming your blessings--calling them out--that holds the power to shift your focus and change your outlook in powerful ways. Because it's true: we've all got at least a couple of things in any given moment that we can be thankful for. And it's good practice to remind ourselves of those things: I am breathing. I'm alive. The sun is shining. I have a home. I have food. I have a job. I've been forgiven and set free.
The list goes on.
It's just not always easy to live in this mindset, especially because we get so preoccupied with our busyness and everything else in our lives, and we tend to dwell on what isn't working, rather than what is, which is actually quite a natural response, because, after all, what isn't working obviously needs to be fixed, and what is working is working, so why mess with it (or in some cases, even pay attention to it at all)?
And this is why it's important to make the conscious choice to recall these things to mind, no matter what they are. To write them where they will remind us how fortunate we are to even have the chance to sit down and reflect on our lives in peace and comfort. We need the reminders, because we so easily forget.
I, for one, want to spend more time trying to remember.
My name is Sam, and I often have a hard time living 'thanksgivingly'.
