No, Americans, you didn’t read that wrong. Today is Thanksgiving in Canada. Of course, in Korea we don’t get the day off and since they don’t eat turkey here, we have to make up our own traditions. In our case, we went out for pizza and watched a creepy movie.
I told my students about Thanksgiving today and asked them what they were thankful for. This is usually what we do on Thanksgiving: take a moment to reflect on the things that we are thankful for in our lives. This is a good practice, of course, and keeps us from taking blessings for granted. However, I realized that it is a passive, recipient-based question, so I decided to turn it around.
Who is thankful for you?
The point of thinking about the things we are thankful for is to count up the blessings we already have. However, the question “Who is thankful for you?” is much more active and has implications for the future as well. In other words, who can we make thankful for us? On a day like Thanksgiving, who can we inspire gratitude in by making their lives better, even in a small way? I don’t need to give you examples: we all know of lots of ways, big and small, to help people around us have a better day or a better life.
Go the extra mile. Try it. Just do it, right?
That is my goal for myself at least: to make others around me thankful.
Happy Thanksgiving.
P.S. Because I have a big Chinese test coming up next Sunday, I won’t be posting anything this week except the Wednesday Friday Fictioneers story. (现在我需要学习很多。) I’ll be back in full strength next week though.
The Green-Walled Tower 
October 14th, 2013 at 11:48 pm
What a great teaching tool this is. Who would not be thankful for those who inspired them in ways to be thankful for someone? It is passed forward and returned in ways we don’t always realize. My husband and I were once on a vacation years ago while visiting Nova Scotia and when we were in Halifax looking desperately for a hotel room open that night to stay in we were not aware until later that night that is was their Thanksgiving Day and all places and hotels were booked full for their holiday. We had a reservation I’d made online with a Bed and Breakfast, but they had closed or were not open we we finally found it to check in that night, and were out of a place to stay so had to drive around for hours to find a hotel room available and some how (not by accident, we believe, either) we came across a beautiful inn where there was a vacancy for a wonderful room with two queen beds, and a great dining room there where we could eat a turkey dinner with all the ‘trimmings’ and we enjoyed our room, the dinner and the time to be thankful for what God provided for us at just the right moment. We will never forget the graciousness of people there that we met and the ways their thankfulness and ours, too intersected. What a memory. Gobble, gobble. Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving, David.
October 15th, 2013 at 12:41 am
David, Happy Thanksgiving to you! What a great way to celebrate with pizza and a scary movie. Sounds fun to me. Also, a very thoughtful way to think about it. I’m always amazed how good I feel, too, when I stop to help someone else. Thanks for this today. Good luck on your Chinese test. Did you say Chinese?! Wow. Best of luck!!
October 15th, 2013 at 10:38 am
What a great idea! Gratitude in reverse.
October 16th, 2013 at 3:51 pm
When you are back share the story of thanksgiving, we all know about Christmas but I did not knew the stories behind other Christian festivals till a friend of mine share the story of Halloween on her blog a few years ago, I still don’t know anything about thanksgiving! will wait!
happy thanksgiving and all the best for your exam!
October 20th, 2013 at 8:41 pm
Thank you, my friend. I’ve been really busy/tired so I haven’t been around much. I just had the Chinese test today, so I can relax a bit for the next while.
October 21st, 2013 at 3:47 am
I pray that you do well in your test today David……:)