Thankfulness

Lately, my brother has been on a thankfulness rage. Facebook quotes about being thankful, stories posted all over the place on what thankfulness means, and personal anecdotes about being thankful himself. People tend to get this way around Thanksgiving, and it usually seems so insincere, but not his. It got to be a bit much, but in the end, I was thankful for his year-round thankfulness.

A lot of the stuff he said needed to be heard. I feel like I'm a pretty grateful person and try not to take things for granted. I appreciate when luck swings my way, and am thankful for having a warm place to come home to after a day of work (which I also appreciate). However, I don't often sit down and think of all the specific things I'm thankful for without being prompted. It's easy to forget to do this when things are going well, and it's one of the last things you want to do when you're down and out. When I'm really bummed out about something, though, thinking about all the things I'm grateful for snaps me out of it pretty easily. It starts off with simple things - I have a job, I can pay my bills, I have hobbies and pastimes I enjoy. I usually extend that further - I'm thankful for all of these truly amazing experiences I've had, I'm thankful for my friends, I'm thankful for the amazing things they are doing with their lives to make the world a better place, and I'm thankful for my family. They've been incredibly supportive in my decision to move clear to the other side of the country (even if they didn't WANT me to go). I know that no matter what happens, my friends and family have my back and support me. I'm so ridiculously thankful for that, and thinking about that can snap me out of any funk I'm in. I try not to take these relationships for granted, but sometimes it just becomes so routine that you forget it's special and need something to kind of hit you in the face to realize what you have.

One thing that always frustrates me is when people talk smack about where they are from. Coming from a small town, I feel like when people moved away, they had so many negative things to say about our hometown. How it's small, how people there think backwards and aren't open minded, how the education was horrible, how they hate going back, so many "Only in _____ will you see _____" (such a pet peeve of mine btw, using the phrase "only in" and describing something you could see in so many places, but I digress). I just don't get that. My whole speech at HS graduation was a huge "I love you" to my hometown. I feel like discounting where you're from is saying you're not thankful for all of the experiences that got you to where you are today - your friends, family, teachers, etc. I'm very thankful for my experiences there growing up. For me anyway, I don't think I was anywhere near as thankful or appreciative of what I had growing up as I should have been. And I'm probably still not, or at least don't express it to the people I should enough. Being out here on my own has given me a chance to really reflect on that. One thing I know I absolutely took for granted, and tend to think about a lot this time of year, was having parents who wanted to give us every opportunity possible. Wanna be in 15 sports at once? Sure! Wanna play an instrument and act in a play and volunteer? OK! I can't imagine all of the things our parents put aside to make sure we made it to every practice and rehearsal and mandatory meeting, and then also showed up to every game and concert and ceremony to support us and cheer us on. I think about it now, being an "adult" and having a full time job and bills and every other responsibility, and there's just no way I could do everything for a kid that my parents did for me. It's so easy as a kid/teenager to not think about the sacrifices your parents make for you. For example, I remember having book orders - basically a few pages of books that you could buy through school at a discounted price. I was always really excited about book orders and would bring them home with books already circled that I wanted!! Pretty much every book order, I'd be allowed to pick out one or two books to get. And the day the books came in - oh man what joy! I know, I was a dork even as a 6 year old, but they were pretty great days. Once when I was in high school or college (well past my book order days), I was looking in a cupboard for balloons, and I found a mug that had a bunch of change in it, and it had a piece of masking tape on it and was labeled "BOOK ORDERS." I don't know if I knew this at the time (heck maybe I even participated and just don't remember...) but our parents would put spare change or extra money they had laying around in there, so when we would come and ask to buy books, they wouldn't need to say no because they didn't have the extra money for it. We didn't go on extravagant vacations all the time or have the latest models of everything, but they were determined that if we wanted to read we needed to have that opportunity. That's the kind of thing that you find out later, and realize you haven't given anyone enough credit for caring about and supporting you.

Seriously have so many of these

There are so many things I'm thankful for that I know have changed my life. I'm thankful Mr. Hurlbut sent me to HOBY (which he NEVER pronounced correctly) when I was a sophomore. I'm thankful HOBY Oregon and HOBY Washington welcomed me into them with open arms. I'm thankful for high school band and all the people I met and experiences I had that I wouldn't have had otherwise. I'm thankful for Robin Ventura and of Montreal. I'm thankful I have brothers who aren't murderers. I'm thankful for all of the gallivanting I've done out here and that people want to hear about it. I'm thankful I have extra money to gallivant with! I'm thankful I'm able to stay in touch with and visit people back home. I'm thankful for all of these amazing people I have in my life. Sometimes that one is just too overwhelming, and I think I'm not living up to their expectations of me or doing as much good in the world as they're doing. I know some really outstanding people.

This whole post feels like a bit of a mish mash of ideas, but basically, I feel like if you have so many things you're thankful for, and you don't do anything to share it or use it to help people, that's pretty selfish. Giving back is such a huge part of appreciation and thankfulness. Whether it's teaching, volunteering, taking care of your family, or in so many other ways, make someone thankful that YOU are in their life. Sometimes I wonder if I'm living like that. Are people thankful I'm in their life? Have I made a positive impact on somebody? I like to think that I have, but it's easy to forget, and very easy to doubt. Please tell people you are thankful for them! It's cliche, but you never know when you won't be able to anymore, and you never want to regret that someone didn't know what you meant to them.