Remarks for Sigma Kappa Delta's Friendsgiving

Let's be real: there are lots of people who say "you need to be grateful" when things aren't going well. They often emphasize that you need to be "grateful" to them so they don't have to do anything for you, let alone clean up the mess they made.

So I think the question for us this holiday season is how to be genuinely grateful. How to really appreciate what we've got while being real about bad things. That's not easy, but one solution is obvious. We don't need to listen to people who weaponize gratefulness. That is simply not serious.

We can learn to listen to ourselves more. I practice listing things I am grateful for. It's a huge help when one or two things go awry. I can see actual, comparable gains which were made and I do not feel an urge to panic. I do recommend keeping a gratefulness journal if you don't do this already. It has exponential benefits, because it keeps you aware of what works. It becomes harder to lose sight of how you have control.

But I think another part of gratefulness is openness. The older I get the more I'm stunned by those who think they've got it all figured out. The world just needs to do everything they say. There's no openness; even if they travel, they're finding ways to impose. We talk about Thanksgiving being a celebration at home, with friends and family, and it certainly is that. But I for one am grateful I got to leave home for a tiny bit. That I got to see that nothing has to be the way it is. For a lot of us, the world opened to us when we opened to it. It's hard to think of much more to be grateful for.