11.24.2014

Happy Thanksgiving


Lately there's been a meme floating around the internet that says something along the lines of "Only in America will people trample each other to buy new stuff the day after celebrating everything they already have."  When I first came across this image, my initial reaction was, "God, this is so on point.  {laugh laugh laugh giggle giggle giggle snort snort}."  But then my next immediate thought was, "God, this is so on point.  {waaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh.  i'm such a piece of shit.}"  

Every year I think about how the holiday season brings out the best, and often times the worst, in people.  And it's hard for me to understand it all because Thanksgiving and Christmas have always been my favorite times of the year.  What does that mean about me?  Am I just like that meme?  Do I sit at the table one day and give thanks and the next go buy a bunch of stuff I absolutely don't need?  Do I give gifts only because I expect to receive them?  If I was really thankful for what I have, wouldn't I opt out of celebrating a holiday that has become almost single handedly about flaunting our wealth and finding reasons that we justify to ourselves why we "need" that new TV or "need" another pair of shoes?

I'm not going to bore you with my mental ramblings about the "reason for the season" here because goodness it will turn into an avalanche pretty quick.  The only real thing I know is that most of the time, I feel so thankful and so happy and so blessed and so filled up with love and appreciation and excitement about life that it literally hurts.  Like I can actually feel my insides start to tense up and I start to squirm because I can feel myself about to burst into tears because I've never felt as much gratitude for life as I do in this very moment.  No, this is not a typical hyperbole moment that so many of you have come to expect from me.  This is literally how I feel a lot of the time.  But do I show it? 

This year, I want to focus more on trying to ensure that others feel the same sort of gratitude that I feel so much of the time.  I want to try and direct my energy toward trying to give others a reason to feel grateful or a reason to feel needed, wanted, loved.  I suppose this year, as I sit around a table filled with more than I could ever want and need, I want to take a moment to prepare for the continuation of the season of giving by vowing to take my thankfulness and pay it forward.  I want to take more time to expand the celebration of thankfulness to include the rest of the year, not just the end of November.

My hope for each of you is that you feel thankful this holiday season.  That you have something in your life that you feel so happy about that you could literally burst at the seams.  Because I think that thankfulness is perhaps the best gift that we can give to others and to ourselves.  That feeling is incomparable, and worth more than any gift that will be under your tree in a few weeks.

This year, instead of focusing on the Christmas season, let's make the season of Thanksgiving last through to the last gift under the tree and to when we are welcoming in a new year.  Through it all, let us give and receive the gift of gratitude.   

xoxo-
mel 

(Gratitude image from here.)

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