Plenty

Today is Thanksgiving Day, a day which we set aside to be especially grateful for the good things in our lives. It corresponds to the ancient harvest festivals that almost every culture has, or had; they, too, were occasions of gratitude for good crops, and the amounts that were taken in.

I usually write on this day that I am thankful for all the things I have in my life, and indeed, I am. But I was thinking earlier of a specific example. One day last week, I had not decided what to have for dinner that evening. The choices were adequate and nutritious, but, to be honest, rather bland and unexciting. Then I realised that they were choices. Many people in the world – considering Earth’s population and the poverty prevalent upon the planet, it may be most of the people – don’t have choices in what to eat, and some of them don’t have anything to eat, period.

My table never looks like that illustrated (though, thanks to a kind friend’s invitation to dinner yesterday, my early Thanksgiving meal came very close; another reason to be grateful) but, to hundreds of millions of my fellow humans, it may as well look like it every night. Whenever I am hungry, I am in a position to eat, and my hunger will be assuaged. That is a remarkable statement to make. How fortunate am I to be able to fill my stomach whenever I wish, and with a selection of foods, if I so desire?

Once again, then, I find myself astonished at my good luck. I have a home and food; I have resources with which to care for my cats; I have the likelihood of more of this to come. These statements alone should make me grateful, and they do.