These good gifts

We are entering into November, which means those in the United States will soon be celebrating Thanksgiving. But the idea of thanksgiving should not be limited to the fourth Thursday of November, nor should any sort of gratitude or generosity be relegated to just a season of the year.

Gratitude is the sense of happiness and thankfulness that one feels when they receive a gift or fortuitous circumstance. It is almost the opposite of greed, though both can be quite powerful on their own. Whereas greed needs to take and take, never content with what it has, gratitude appreciates what it is given. Gratitude never expects blessings, but looks at each gift as good and embraces and affirms each gift as something joyful.

It’s magical.

Gratitude in turn begets generosity.

But we cannot be generous if we give out of our own foolish necessity. We cannot be generous if we are giving begrudgingly out of a sense of duty. There is no gratitude in those kinds of giving. There is no generosity towards others when it is selfish and greedy. Generosity should bubble up and overflow from our gratitude causing the desire to help others “just because” to be stoked into a burning flame and then into a raging fire.

We have all paid a good deed forward when we could, buying someone else groceries when they were in need, helping out a stranger in a time of trouble because someone else was kind enough and generous enough to stop and help us. We help others because we remember when we didn’t have enough and were helped in return.

“Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”

~ attributed to Arthur Ashe, who made it famous

May the gratitude in our hearts be turned into generosity and goodness in our hearts. May we bless others with our courage, our inspiration, our hope, our love, our joy, and our peace as we have been blessed. May we bless others as we have in turn been blessed.

These good gifts. See how wonderful they are.

Keep writing, everyone.

Stay magical.

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