What If We Were Thankful?

What are you doing for Thanksgiving?   Cooking at home?   Going to friends’ or relatives?   Are you going to watch the Lions play the Packers?  Go to the Thanksgiving Day Parade or watch it on TV?  Get ready for Black Friday shopping?  Pour through the newspaper and all the store advertisements?

Are you going to wear your stretchy pants?   Take that second helping of stuffing?  Save room for the pumpkin pie? 

Are you going to burn those biscuit bottoms again?   How ’bout those potatoes?   Lumpy?   Are you going to nail the turkey this time or is it going to be dry again?  Are you going with the canned cranberry gel or the real cranberries?

What are YOU doing this Thursday?  

Are you going to dread seeing your relatives?  Dread spending time with the parents?  Are you going to wish you were somewhere else or with someone else?   Maybe sit and slouch and pout in the corner and text all day?

Are you going to hate having to cook and clean up for fifteen unappreciative guests who come early and fall asleep on your couch late?  Are you going to pretend to get along with your spouse so that nobody knows you are divorcing?   Are you going to privately resent going to his side of the family or her side of the family because their stuffing is god-awful…

What are YOU doing this Thursday?  What are you choosing to do this Thanksgiving?

Are you going to hate?  Bitch?  Criticize?  Lament?  Dread?  Rage?  Lose your patience?  Fail to appreciate? 

What are YOU going to do this holiday?  How are YOU going to recognize this holiday of Thanksgiving?

I know what some people will be doing this Thanksgiving. 

This Thursday eleven people are going to die from asthma.   Fifteen hundred will die of cancer while another 3400 will be diagnosed.

This Thanksgiving more than five thousand people will suffer a head injury, more than fourteen hundred will suffer a sexual assault and twenty-one thousand sets of parents will lose a child.

 

On Thursday almost eight hundred people will find out they have Alzheimer’s and

30 people will be diagnosed with MS.    Forty-five  people will be murdered on Thanksgiving and more than three thousand will die in a car crash.

 

This Thursday more than 10 thousand people will lose their jobs.   Thirty-six thousand people in Detroit alone will be homeless. 

 

This Thanksgiving 850 million people will go to bed hungry.

 

What are you going to do this Thanksgiving?   What are WE going to do? 

 

What if we were thankful?  Genuinely, humbly, simply thankful…