The Gratitude Game

One Thanksgiving a couple of years ago we were following the normal tradition and going around the table saying what we are all grateful for.  My brother, who was there with his two highly energetic children, said that he was grateful for his kids.  I, seizing the opportunity, responded that I was glad that they were his kids.  I was being facetious of course, yet there was a nugget of truth in it.  As a single lady, it can be hard during the holidays that center on families and children.  Truthfully there is a large part of me that wants that someday.  Yet I can’t deny that there are certain benefits to being single, such as when I can turn my nieces and nephews back over to their parents.

It can be hard to look on the bright side of situations.  When we are young, we long to be old, when we’re old we wish we were young again.  Short people wish they were tall and tall people want to be shorter.  When we’re single, we seek after marriage, than when we do get married, we realize how good we really had it when we were single.  It is difficult to have an attitude of gratitude when what we lack seems so much greater than what we have, but no matter how bad we think we have it, there is always more to be grateful for than we realize.

At times when I am blue or feeling down, there is a game I like to play, I call it the Gratitude Game.  (It is somewhat similar to Pollyanna’s Glad Game.)  I start listing all of the things that I am grateful for.  I start with the obvious things like family, friends, a place to live, a job.  Then as I go on I get sillier and sillier.  I’m Grateful for the color yellow, street lamps, toothbrushes.

We all have a lot more to be grateful for than we realize, but it is a lot easier to complain about what we don’t have than it is to take a good look at the things we do.  It stands to reason, that if there is something to complain about, there must also be something to be grateful for.  Even if you have nothing, you can still be grateful that somewhere out there, there is such a thing as the color yellow.