As Thanksgiving passes and the season of giving and receiving gifts approaches, I thought it would be timely to reflect briefly on gratefulness.

Do we really ever realize how fortunate we are for what we have? Sure, we can think about gratefulness. For example, create a mental list of things in our lives that we have that we could not live without. We are very fortunate to have these essentials in our lives. To this list we may add the numerous things that we could live without, yet have nonetheless. Yet, how often do we really appreciate these things? Does our gratitude affect what we ask for in this life, how we treat others, or what we do with our time?

A co-worker today told me a story of a cousin of hers who found out that she had cancer in three major organs on the same day that her father passed away. Can you imagine? Grieving for the passing of your father, due to cancer, and being diagnosed with cancer yourself. All within the same day.

My co-worker turned to me after this story and told me:

The fact that you woke up today breathing … that is a blessing. You better be grateful.

She meant it. I could feel in her voice. Her tone combined awe, pain, gratitude, sadness, and a hint of joy. This fellow teacher of mine often shares this message of gratefulness with myself and the other people in the school. You can often find her roaming the halls in the morning before school handing out slips of paper with inspirational quotes, and words of gratitude.

Unfortunately we do not often take the time to truly appreciate what we have until people close to us lose it, or we lose it ourselves.

So, please, as we transition from a time of giving thanks to a time of thinking about the things we want (or want to give to others) keep in mind what we already have.