Gratitude, revisited

As you may know if you subscribe to my blog, my last post before the latest blogging drought was on changing our attitudes to ones of gratitude. Fittingly, I've starting writing again in a month which contains one of my favorite holidays, Thanksgiving. While we often complain about the commercialization of the holiday, Thanksgiving is one that for me, at least, still revolves around relationships and observance. I love getting together with friends and (hopefully!) family for a nice relaxed meal around a nice relaxed day, cooking unashamedly and profusely, getting a guaranteed weekday off of work together, watching some football together, sitting around or playing outside -- and most of all, putting aside our "cool" hats and engaging in the admittedly sometimes cheesy task of talking about our blessings openly and communally (although I almost always get an awkward giggle or to when I insist on this tradition). I LOVE THANKSGIVING!

In keeping with my forementioned plan to enhance the joyfulness of my life and do things other than watch television  (my favorite shows often focus on the grim parts of life), I am going to try to devote an extra amount of time this month to learning about things like gratitude and happiness and apply them as much (and as permanently) as possible in my own life. I'm more into practical, intellectually challenging advice than surface-level, fluffy approaches to life-improvement, so I'm excited to have found several avenues already that I find to be more useful and effective in deeper, more long-term change.

I mentioned that I'm reading Max Lucado's book Great Day Every Day. He encourages us there to apply those lessons of happiness to every day. Even the terrible ones. That is certainly a challenge. But a worthy one. I realized today that while I know the ins and outs of many Biblical stories of people being positive and grateful in terrible circumstances, I've never really thought about the implications of following that example in our lives. I have said that I do, and thought that I did, but when I think about real things that happen or could happen on those terrible days, I have a very hard time picturing myself rejoicing or singing praises about them--for real. This I think will be the biggest challenge; one that I'm honestly not entirely sure I would be able to achieve. From working on a dissertation I know that when one is faced with a mountainous task it is usually best to tackle one small piece of it at a time. Today, I'd like to reflect on and share this sentence from Great Day Every Day:

"Gratitude lifts our eyes off the things we lack so we might see the blessings we possess."

More on perspective later.