If we ever needed to spend time being thankful, I think it is right now. For many months, it’s felt like all we’ve seen and heard and focused on is what is wrong, what’s lacking and what needs changing. That makes my heart heavy and my soul tired.

It is easy to find what’s wrong in the world. There are plenty of places you can go to read and to hear people telling you how awful things are and how upset we should be about pretty much everything.

If I’m not mindful, the energy of negativity and fear pulls at me. In that place, I forget the things that are wonderful in my life. And, there is so much more good than bad. That is why I need Thanksgiving this year. I want to spend a day counting my blessings, a day reminding myself that life is for the most part good.

There is, I think, an art to counting blessings, to finding the gifts within the ordinary. Children do this so naturally. Maybe that is why I loved Thanksgiving so much when I was a child. It was a day when everyone stopped to pay attention to what every kid already knew — just being alive is a blessing for which to be thankful.

Right now in our country, there is a lot of division, fear and uncertainly. You can almost feel it in the air. If we allow that swirling energy to draw us in, it becomes much harder to recognize that all is not lost, that we are lucky in so many ways. Celebrating a day of giving thanks is difficult if we don’t let go of anger, and mistrust and find the ways we are alike instead of what separates us.

I read that many people are dreading Thanksgiving Day this year because of politics. They are anxious that differing opinions will make family gatherings uncomfortable. That is indeed sad, but it doesn’t have to be that way if we choose differently.

There is a Christmas song with the lyrics that say, we need a little Christmas now. I think we need a little Thanksgiving right now far more than we need anything else.

You know the beauty of the Thanksgiving holiday is that it is only about appreciation and gratitude. It’s not a very material holiday. Other than purchasing a turkey and the trimmings for a meal, there isn’t much spending associated with the day.

It’s more about stopping for a big breath before the rush of Christmas begins. It’s about resting from our labors to appreciate the harvest, to acknowledge how grace takes care of us throughout the year. For one day, we stop to consider what is right in our lives, and how so much of it comes to us without us giving it a thought.

Our heart beats and we breathe without a conscious effort on our part. We taste and touch and hear with no thought for doing it. Nature and music and art are there for us to enjoy, gifts free for the taking.

What I’m trying to say is there is much to be thankful for if we don‘t lose sight of it. And, we have the capacity for caring, for making life better in our country and in our world.

It is easy to allow the bad to outweigh the good in our heads, so easy to find fault and to blame each other for creating and for being the problem. Don’t you find that exhausting? I do.

So because my heart and my soul need to spend time simply appreciating, I’m celebrating this Thanksgiving by making a commitment to do what Lucy MacDonald suggests in the following quote.

“Be an appreciator of the seemingly small things in life; a smile, a kind word, a beautiful flower, a few hours of unstructured time, a laughing child, for it is the small things that become the warp and weft of the fabric of your life.”

 

Nancy Blackmon is a former newspaper editor and a yoga teacher.