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 