Often when people are feeling grateful, they are feeling grateful for what they have and can afford. People feel grateful because they can put more food on the table, than they know they can eat in one meal. They know if they throw out those leftovers a few days later they knew they were not going to eat anyway, its okay. They made a huge meal because food is plentiful for them.
People are grateful for the home they can afford to live in and where it is located. They are grateful for the vehicle they can afford to drive, and the gas they can afford to put in it. People are grateful they can buy what they want when they want, never having to struggle or wonder where the money comes from.
People are grateful for the clothes they wear, and the Church they go to. People are grateful for their vacations, weekend trips, and nights out on the town. People are grateful for their weekends, but wish they were longer. People are grateful they are educated, and have a good life.
In the sum of all things, this is not gratefulness. It is hollow and shallow behavior we were taught is gratefulness. Think of the last Man or Woman pronouncing their faith to everyone who would listen to them. What those people have is all they will ever have. This type of gratefulness is the empty shell it feels like, and nothing more.
People are not aware this is not gratefulness. This type of behavior is a frequent feeding of one’s ego, and nothing more. I used to be one of those people. It was always pleasant to be at a family get together and have someone say grace that could really get the message out there. They would make everyone at the table feel good about what they have and what they were going to eat. We would be beaming by the time grace was said, and spend the next minutes happily eating and thinking how good our life is.
Deep down inside, for me at least, it always felt a little hollow. What was the point of being grateful for all the things I have every day of my life? Should I be grateful because my house is better, my car newer, or I am better more handsome, prettier or better dressed than another?
We hear of people who have lost everything, more so now days. These stories will be repeated often, as long as the recent flooding and other disasters are deemed newsworthy. Then they will fade away, replaced by newer more exciting news.
For some of those people who have or will lose everything, a very few will come to terms with the real meaning of gratefulness, and what it really means to be grateful. They will learn that being grateful is not an accounting for all the things they had in their lives before they lost it all.
Being Grateful goes well beyond surveying ones kingdom and feeling good for all the possessions one has, and the great food one is about to eat. True gratefulness is acknowledging with your heart and mind, all that went into what you have, or what you are about to eat.
Pretend for a minute you are about to eat your next meal. Pretend it came from a fast food place. You are about to eat some type of sandwich with chips or French-fries and an icy cold drink. Think about being grateful for that meal. Take a few seconds and think about really being grateful for your meal and what you think it means to you. Have that thought handy? Now take a few minutes and read about what being grateful for your meal is really about.
Think about only one of your french-fries. Nothing too exciting about a french-fry. A piece of potato sliced and diced into a long small square. Flavored and deep fried. Your burger is nothing special either. There are two pieces of bread on the outside, protecting some lettuce, tomato, pickle, and maybe onion sitting on top of a piece of meat. Not too much there either that is really special. Same meal you have eaten probably hundreds of times before.
For that one French-fry to be created, hundreds of years of modification to the potato had to take place. Toxic pesticides and herbicides (unless it is a GMO potato) have been applied at least fourteen times between planting and harvesting. The soil is so toxic in fact nothing lives around the potato plant. Nothing crawls around or on it. The soil is basically as dead as dead soil can be to prevent any insect or microbe from feasting on potato and ruining your future meal. The soil is so toxic where your future French-fry is being grown that no one who cares about their health entered the potato patch on foot without a gas mask on.
It may be a little less severe for the lettuce, tomato, and pickle, but someone dripped their sweat on the parents of the greenery in your hamburger. Someone worked hard, planting, caring, and harvesting, so you could enjoy your burger.
Think about the meat in your burger. That meat came from a live animal. That Animal was born to Parents who were killed and eaten long before the Animal that became your burger was killed and processed. After being born, the Animal you are going to eat was allowed to do little more than eat. Eating food that may have never been intended for that Animal to eat. Eat and receive injections, or force fed by mouth, steroids, antibiotics, and other growth hormones. The Animal never complained. It could not, and it did not know any better.
Just when that Animal’s life was starting to be good, and it was sensing there was more to life than growing bigger, that Animal was taken away from wherever it was living and slaughtered. The Animal you are now eating did not have a choice in whether it lived or died.
No one asked that Animal if it wanted to die so you could eat a sandwich you really don’t care all that much about. If it was lucky it was killed humanely, whatever that is. If something went wrong, it was killed anyway. Every day many people have to do or oversee the killing, cleaning and packaging of that Animal.
The soda you are drinking has flavorings that were collected by someone in some hot or dry climate. The flavorings were mixed with water and sugar, and secret ingredients, bottled and shipped by people who probably do not like what they do for a living. Someone trucks that soda from the plant to where you bought it. The paper and plastic wear you received as part of your meal all came from somewhere. People worked doing jobs they do not like so you could have those things. Finally there are the people who served you.
The process goes on and on, from where you bought your meal, where your body chooses to evacuate it, to the people who take care of the sewer system and reclamation process. This whole process of buying a sandwich is not an exercise in being grateful. Being grateful for having a few dollars to pay for a sandwich is serving ones ego.
The next time you feel like a sandwich, contemplate the Animal and Plants that died for you. Think about the People who perform some very distasteful job so you can eat that sandwich. Think about the lost lives, labor and sweat that went into making everything you own.
How does it make you feel knowing that being able to pay a few dollars for a burger has nothing to do with being grateful? Being grateful in its finest form means thinking about an animals life that was taken, not given. What Farmer put his health at risk, and turned his field into a hazardous waste site for you, and who ached from harvesting the bounty for you. Pondering how many people worked hard at a job they do not like doing so you can have a meal.
Thinking about these things and being thankful for all of it before you take your first bite is what being grateful is really all about. Being grateful for the food you are about to eat, and thinking about the process to make it happen, so you can eat, is what being grateful is all about.
I did something different this Thanksgiving day and it felt good. I did not do anything earth shattering, such as feed many homeless people, or cook a huge turkey and all the fixings. Instead I had been wondering how to make Thanksgiving unique. How to make this Thanksgiving stand out from the normal holiday family feast.
Growing up, I saw sunsets, sunrises, thunderheads, snow storms, mountains, and misty lakes in the early morning. All sights that make anyone think how lucky they are to be alive and be present in the moment. But being grateful was not part of my feelings. After all the mountains did not move, the sun rose every day, and snow fell every winter.
This blog has helped make me feel like a citizen of the world in many ways. Having people visiting from all over the world is something that fills me with awe. I read a number of blogs and I normally do not spend a lot of time wondering where the blog originates. Maybe I would be surprised if I knew where some of the blogs I read are from.
He pulled me well out of the sand and back on to hard pack. I thanked him profusely of course, and said I wished I had caught some game fish, I would have gladly shared with him. His answer was, “It got me away from the campsite for five minutes”.