Giving Thanks
The reasons are legion for giving thanks. Thanksgiving was meant to be an occasion whereby people could celebrate another successful harvest, the securing of foods to ensure that another winter could be faced with sufficient food to put by to last until the coming spring and beyond. Celebrations of thanksgiving, given other names but with the very same meaning of a spirit of thanksgiving have taken place since time immemorial throughout many cultures and many countries of the world.In the spirit of looking at the glass half-full or half-empty, sociologists might say that anyone who identifies the good things in life and those good events in one's own personal life to give value to the meaning of life are much further ahead in stability and lifestyle than those who think only of what their lives lack, failing to appreciate what they have. In that sense, a group celebration of thanksgiving can be viewed as society's way of persuading its citizens that they have much to be grateful for, despite some areas of insecurity.
Personally, as someone fortune enough to live in North America I have a great deal to value in my life, and much to be grateful for. I give thanks for many reasons.
- To have been born in Canada, a country where my freedom to achieve, freedom to worship or not, freedom of thought and of speech, freedom to make as much of my life as I choose to, is available to me, as it is to any citizen of this great country, who can be assured of peaceful co-existence with one's neighbours.
- To my parents, for raising me and instilling in me a sense of social responsibility.
- To my good fortune also for having been born a female child to grow into a woman to whom nature has bestowed many favours and kindnesses.
- To my husband, my soul's match and life's partner without whom most of the goodness and pleasure available to me in this world would be absent.
- To our children whose births enabled us to take part in the beauty and the wonder of new life. To our children whose adult personas express to us much that is favourable in the world we all inhabit.
- To our grandchild whose curiosity, intelligence, good nature, happiness and physical beauty reflects ongoing generations and hope for mankind.
- To the personal good fortune which permits us to live a retired life of comparative leisure without want.
- To the availability in this country of an immense variety of good foods of which we are able to avail ourselves, at a truly modest cost.
- To life!
posted by Pieface @ Monday, October 09, 2006
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