Thanksgiving’s here–be grateful!
If the approach of the holiday season makes you take a deep breath and start your annual ritual of worrying, stress-eating, and complaining…
PLEASE STOP.
Don’t complain about the holidays unless you have something legitimate to complain about.
That goes for me, too; I’m not immune to this manufactured “holiday stress” syndrome. Last week, I started compiling the list of things I needed to do to prepare my house to host Thanksgiving, and I started panicking. Cleaning! Cooking! Buying Andes mints to put on my guests’ pillows! Then I slapped myself back into reality.
Things are tough around the world. And it’s not seasonal—it’s the way it is all the time. With millions of displaced people, bombings, and earthquakes, things are pretty terrible. Listening to the BBC is enough to make you want to hide under your covers and cry.
I’m not reminding you of all this, blog reader, to depress you. I’m merely emphasizing that the holidays are a time of year when we should be slowing down and reflecting on what we have.
So this Thanksgiving, I’m going to be grateful—like, really grateful. I’m going to serve plates full of grateful at my dinner table. Because as much as I worry about the tenderness of the Brussels sprouts, or the brownness of the Thanksgiving turkey, none of it matters. What matters is that the people I love are near, and we are all well-nourished, sheltered, and content. None of that is a foregone conclusion, and it’s something we should never, ever take for granted.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
I Came, I Saw, I Blogged 
We are thankful for you!
Also Matts asks: does the above apply to recreational complaining?