Thanks -- a lot

Thanksgiving 2009 is just about over, but I'm still mulling over the things in my life for which I am grateful. One is a growing awareness of how gratitude itself can transform the way I look at life in general and my own life in particular.

Once, while attending a memorial service for a young person who had died tragically -- and what young person's death isn't tragic -- I heard a priest say that spiritual living is grateful living. It seemed an unusual thing to say at a moment such as this, when gratitude was probably the furthest thing from the minds of those who loved this boy the most.

But the more he talked about it, the more I came to realize the healing power that gratitude can have, especially at a time of great loss. Gratitude can turn the mourning of our losses into celebrations of what we once were blessed to have.

In my own life, gratitude has proven to be a powerful antidote to anxiety and regret. I'm pretty good at brooding over the past, so I need all the antidotes to that tendency I can find.

Gratitude seems almost too simplistic, but it can be a powerful force. Instead of fretting over what I don't have, I try to think of all I do have and all the things I've gotten to do -- things that, as a young person, I only dreamed of doing.

Sometimes it's enough to think of that young boy and to recognize how blessed I've been just to be given the gift of time.