Meditations on Thankfulness: Day 6

"Thanksgiving enables us to be fully present in each of the moments of our lives and, at the same time, be fully present to the eternity which is crashing into those moments (for those who have eyes to see). We have the ability to resist the culture of despair by bearing witness to life and hope! Cynicism loosens its smugly fearful, icy grip, warmed by winds of thanks."

Thankfulness takes work. This is in part an answer to my inquiry in the last post. Perhaps it is not that I am ungrateful, just a bit lazy. I was even unsure of if I would write this post today because it takes energy and effort to do so, just as it does to be thankful. The simple reality is that although it would be great if (and sometimes this does happen) you are just a bystander as thankfulness possess you, but often this is not the case. More often than not, I believe that thankfulness is necessitated by critical thought; you need to allow thankfulness to take its hold of you and it is that much more likely to do so. On the contrary, if you think that you can be a bystander and yet still develop an attitude of thankfulness, than it is much less likely to happen.

Perhaps you may think that this all goes without saying, and perhaps it does and I do believe that it is implied in the previous posts. However, I would be utterly remiss if I went all this time without simply stating this fact, thankfulness requires critical thought. You need to think about what you are thankful for, critically. If you allow yourself to grow lazy and complacent in your thinking and even in your thankfulness, then thankfulness will not only not likely take effect, but it will likely not be as potent if it does. I think this is true of many things, but this is after all a meditation on thankfulness.

I arrived at this by thinking about all of the things that I am thankful for, as I often do, but especially now since it is Christmas time I felt like this would be a healthy exercise. But I also found within myself a proclivity to be lazy and not want to think critically about this. It then hit me just how much thought and energy and effort thankfulness actually requires. I think that in seasons when I do not find myself being very thankful or when i find that my thankfulness is not affecting me like I wish that it would, at least in terms of my actions, it is likely that I am not giving it the thought that it requires and would behoove me to do so. I need to delve deeper and concede that thankfulness takes much critical thought and effort.
This has been the sixth day meditating on thankfulness.