Of a certain age...

I wanted to write something about being thankful, but I'm not feeling very thankful as I'm writing this. My life sucks right now and my mind won't go there so, for inspiration, I googled "thanksgiving quotes" and clicked on a page of picture quotes. By the time I got halfway through reading them, I was feeling much more grateful.

So I thought if your life sucks right now and you're not feeling very thankful either, maybe if I wrote a bunch of thanksgiving quotes for you to read, it would improve your mood, too. So here goes.

Give thanks for a little and you will find a lot.

It is not happy people who are thankful; it is thankful people who are happy.

To give thanks in solitude is enough.

Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go.

Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.

When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength.

Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living.

If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.

While working to make your dream a reality, feel the joy of your accomplishment and savor it with celebration and Thanksgiving.

Give thanks for each new morning with its light.

Give thanks for rest and shelter of the night.

Give thanks for health and food.

Give thanks for love and friends.

Give thanks for everything thy goodness sends.

Today I give thanks to everyone who has been part of my life's journey. Never let the things you want make you forget the things you have. I am thankful for love, freedom, happiness, family, health, friends, knowledge, memories, strength, courage. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow. Today, instead of regretting where you've been, give thanks for where you are going. Thank you for the food before us, the family beside us and the love between us. There is always, something to be thankful for.

Celebrate your life with love and gratitude by giving thanks for this very precious moment, as well as all the wonderful blessings that are around you every day. Only by giving are you able to receive more than you already have. Let us all take a moment and be thankful that spiders can't fly. Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks. Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them is the true measure of our thanksgiving. If the only prayer you said in your whole life was Thank You ... that would suffice.

As we express gratitude we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them. Cultivate the habit of being grateful. When you love what you have, you have everything you need. What if today, we were just grateful for everything? May your stuffing be tasty. May your turkey be plump. May your potatoes and gravy have nary a lump. May your yams be delicious and your pies take the prize, and may your Thanksgiving dinner stay off your thighs.

There, I feel much better now. Hope you do, too. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!