It’s the night before Thanksgiving. I’m going to confess something. I’ve never really liked Thanksgiving all that much. I’ve never told many people that because I feel like a completely terrible person. The one holiday that’s supposed to be about giving thanks and being grateful for what we have. I mean, if you know me, you know that I LOVE food. Yet, somehow I am usually not very impressed with Thanksgiving food. It’s just not my first choice. I’ve always just kind of liked to think of Thanksgiving as a part of the Christmas festivities! Now Christmas. That’s where it’s at! Am I right?
Anyway, I go along with Thanksgiving and it’s always nice enough, but do you know what part I dread the most? I am literally so ashamed to tell you. You know the part where we go around the table and tell everyone what we are most thankful for? That’s it. That’s the moment. I hate it when it comes to me and I have to think of an answer. It’s not that I don’t have a lot to be thankful for, it’s that every answer I come up with sounds so generic. Like I’m reciting a memorized answer for a quiz. Family? So generic! Are you just sucking up to all the relatives sitting around the table? A good career? Well honestly, work has been pretty rough lately and it’s the reason I’m not with my family or my boyfriend this holiday, so I don’t know that I can 100% truthfully say I’m thankful for my job. Friends? So cliche! Plus, I don’t act like I’m very thankful for them, since I hardly ever call them. Anyway, you get my point. Anytime I try to answer this question I feel like every answer comes across as generic and cliche and insincere. So I hate it. I don’t want my answer to sound so boring and superficial.
But today I’ve been thinking. I’ve been trying to think about it with a different perspective. Today I realized that I should be thankful that I have so many different options to answer that question with. And I realized why all of those answers sound generic and insincere to me. Because I take them for granted! I take my large, loving family for granted. I take my warm, cozy house for granted. I take my amazing friends for granted. I take the ginormous feast of turkey and stuffing that I somehow always get, even the years that I’m working at the hospital on Thanksgiving for granted. For some reason I always felt like I needed some mind-blowing thing to be thankful for. Like “I’m thankful I was miraculously cured from cancer”. When in reality, I should be so thankful that I’ve never had to hope for a miraculous cure because, thankfully, I’ve never had cancer!
This Thanksgiving I want to stop taking all of the blessings in my everyday life for granted and start being genuinely thankful for them. I hope you do the same. Happy Thanksgiving!
