How to be Grateful After a Year Like This!

Julie L.
York

This year can be summed up with two ideas that have been circling social media:

I feel like someone in the future has been trying to help us all year by coming back and tweaking things, only to inadvertently open up some fresh new hell... and they keep coming back over and over to fix the latest mistake.

God talking to Michael: You set things up for the 2020s, right?
Michael: Yes. … Wait, you said “the 2020s” as in plural?
God: Yes.
Michael: Oh.
God: ... What... did you put everything I ordered for the decade into one year?!
Michael: …..


At first, I laughed at both, then got quiet, because this year has been one for the books for the entire world. Which books remain to be seen. History or comedy? Tragic comedy? Absurd history? Tragic History? A mix of all of them? Or perhaps the sub sub sub chapter in History that no one dares open, like Hagrid's book on creatures or Pandora's box—too dangerous to open, lest it happen again.
I will be the first to raise my hand and admit that I am not as good at
being grateful and thankful as I should. Most of the time, I remember to say 'Thank You'. But even then, I'll admit to occasionally forgetting because my brain has me going fast forward, in roughly a million directions, at any given time.
And, honestly, aren't most of us like that? Usually pretty good, but falling flat sometimes. Remembering the thanks fleetingly, then life shoves us from behind, so we move past, move forward, move on before we trip. The thing about thankfulness and gratitude is that we have to consciously think about it, and again, being totally honest, isn't it easier to think of the bad things that make our lives so hard? Focus on the negative thrown at us from every direction, on every device? Why is bad so much easier to notice than good? The worse things seem to get, the worse we see things. We often forget there is a lot we have to be thankful and grateful for.
Now, there is a reason I am using both thankful and grateful. They mean different things.
 

Read the entire article in the November 2020 issue of InD'Tale magazine.

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