This Thursday is Thanksgiving in the U.S. It’s nice to pause and count our blessings every year on that day. And it’s easy if you are fortunate enough to spend the day with dear family and friends—special relationships that we count among our greatest blessings.
In the area where I live, Storm Sandy is still a very fresh experience.
As I reported in last week’s post, I was among the people for whom Storm Sandy amounted to an inconvenience: We lost power in our house for five days, had no cell service near my house for five days, had no internet in our house for eight days, and lost power in my office for eight days.
I’ve touched base with many people in the aftermath of the storm—family, friends, business associates, and others I’ve met in the course of daily life, such as people working in stores. As I reported in last week’s post, almost to a person, those who did not suffer a devastating loss replied to my e-mails, text messages, and calls with some variation of “It could have been worse.”
In essence, we were given an early opportunity to give thanks. Here are some of the notes I received:
“I was one of the lucky ones.”
“We were lucky.”
“We did much better than most. Glad it’s behind us. Praying for those who lost so much.”
“We were without power for a while but everyone is safe.”
“As with everyone affected, it has been a stressful time and we are doing what we can…We try to maintain perspective and realize it could have been worse.”
“…without power through Saturday. Grateful that’s all it was.”
“…most importantly, we have our lives and our health…”
“We are considering ourselves fortunate in comparison to many other people who experienced more significant damage/loss.”
“We were luckier than many.”
“All we lost was power. We were fortunate.”
“We were very lucky, compared to others…it could have been much worse!”
“It was stressful but could have been worse.”
“We are well and blessed to have survived this storm. We do not have electricity or heat but we have each other and that is what matters most!”
“Considering what we saw on TV or heard in the news, we were the lucky ones.”
“A tree landed on our roof and came thru the bedroom wall, we lost most of our deck, we had some flooding in the basement, and we lost one car. Other people had it much worse.”
Let’s not wait until another storm to count our blessings. And let’s not wait until next Thanksgiving. Start a new habit right now. Stop and count your blessings on a regular basis. Daily would be awesome. At the very least, try to make a habit doing so on a weekly basis. I send out a reminder to stop and list those things you are grateful for every Saturday morning to everyone who “likes” the Six Simple Rules Facebook page (so if you don’t already, like us on Facebook to get that reminder.)
It’s a proven happiness strategy to create a gratitude list, whether privately, or publicly. I welcome your list in the comments here…
My best regards,
David