I hope your day has been filled with more food than you logically know how to consume, conversations and family time chock full of stories and walks down memory lane, and hopefully a time of reflection dedicated to being thankful.
My family has the food part under control.
Conversations and time spent together-check.
And to integrate thankfulness into our day we have our long standing Thankful Tree tradition.
It, in essence, our tradition entails each person writing things they're thankful for on an artificial leaf. The tradition has morphed through the years. At first we bought a real sapling each year and tried to write on craft foam. Now we write on paper leaves and place them on a metal "Ornamental Thankful Tree" which is a metal outdoor yard decoration which moderately resembles a tree and has lots of notches to hang the leaves.
Some years I write in lists, sometimes as a paragraph that spirals around the shape of the leaf, sometimes as bullet points that morph around the curves. My content has changed too. My papa loves to tell me about how when I was a little kid I said I was thankful for hot water. I have become less specific and literal and more broad and abstract. And really, I'm not sure that's a good thing.
I feel like on Thanksgiving we commonly choose to be thankful for the big, overarching things like freedom and family. I mean, that what was on my thankful leaf too. I think it's important to be grateful for the big things. The big things make us realize how our life could be catastrophically different. Thinking this big is, on one hand powerful, but on the other hand I feel like it's almost superficial. It doesn't force us to really analyze our own lives and really think about what makes us feel grateful. It's pretty easy to say that you're thankful for your dog and your job, what if I asked you what you're most thankful for from the last 48 hours? Do these blanket statements actually force you to reflect on your life, or on this day of thankfulness are we just picking up some nice, vague, prepackaged statement off our holiday shelf of anecdotes?
I don't know about you, but I want more than just a nice phrase to say over dinner. I want more. I want to get to the authentic stuff that I'm thankful for. The stuff that is directly happening in my life right now, like having a calm driving instructor or getting 10 hours of sleep. Are these things more trivial than faith and freedom?
You betcha.
But these are the kinds of things that I can truly be grateful for and feel the effects of. For instance, the some of the things I am thankful for which have made a difference in my life in the last 72 hours:
- I activated my debit card and it was much easier than I expected
- The weather has been nice enough for 2 bike rides
- My prescription sunglasses which allow me to look cool and see without squinting
- The way my friends and I can handle little snafus maturely and graciously
And no, this probably isn't the stuff your relatives want to hear about. Most people are trained to want the more impersonal statements.
But what if we changed that?
What if we could create a year long attitude of thankfulness within ourselves, our homes, and maybe our community? Would we then be more able to share the real things? The little things? The things we really truly are thankful for on a personal level? This is not to say that you aren't actually grateful for broader things, such as your health, but you most likely haven't directly felt the effects of "good health" in the past week, where you might have felt the effects of that nice smoothie a coworker brought to you last week. See the difference?
I guess what I'm really trying to say is: I think we need to remember to be grateful on a more regular basis, and in this gratefulness, try to see out the little things, instead of glossing over them to make large, sweeping statements.
Basically, count your blessings.
Another family tradition is an annual picture with Tilly the Turkey, our yard sign.
Tilly knows what's up.
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