Again we arrive at our nation’s most important holiday as it applies to all nationalities, and religious creeds–or even those with none.
Thanksgiving is a period in time to remind all of the innumerable blessings we take for granted day by day, year after year. Ironically, the less people had in past eras, the more appreciative they were–of family, neighbors, friends and associates as well as of their crude possessions, compared to today’s high technology, inventions and ultra-conveniences. Likewise, the freer we become from the physical chains of human bondage, the more enslaved we become by our new masters of ego, selfishness, greed, envy, covertness, and other various self-destructing attitudes and habits. To constantly compare one’s accomplishments and possessions (or lack of) with those perceived to have more is to create a perpetual state of instability as there will always be those with “more” in this incomparable “…land of the free, and home of the brave.”
Consequently we will begin to constantly seek for those people, places and/or things to blame for our continuous state of self-imposed slavery to the much harder to unshackle chains on the brain. Such psychological shackles blind and immunize us to every kind word or deed offered by others, whether of a different or same family, race or religion. The results equals continuously mounting lack of appreciation and subsequent respect for anyone or anything that not only stunts our social, economic and spiritual growth, but has a trickle-down effect on our posterity.
The healthiest attitude one could acquire (for self and surroundings) is acknowledgement of all the innumerable blessings, great and small, that we each take for granted day-by-day. This will in turn add up to ever increasing appreciation of their Source (toward Whom all turn when in trouble) and a perpetual “attitude of geatitude.”
With an attitude of gratitude one counts gains instead of losses and blessings instead of crosses. Through an attitude of gratitude one becomes more cognizant and appreciative of the incomparable beauty and Order of nature and of the unimaginable opportunities that constantly surround us in this comparatively new nation, in spite of its innumerable inequities.
Let’s welcome this Thanksgiving with a new Attitude of Gratitude!
