'Finally,
be grateful for useless things. It is relatively easy to be thankful
for the most important and obvious parts of life — a happy marriage,
healthy kids or living in America. But truly happy people find ways to
give thanks for the little, insignificant trifles. Ponder the
impractical joy in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem “Pied Beauty”:
Glory be to God for dappled things —
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced — fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
Be
honest: When was the last time you were grateful for the spots on a
trout? More seriously, think of the small, useless things you experience
— the smell of fall in the air, the fragment of a song that reminds you
of when you were a kid. Give thanks.
This
Thanksgiving, don’t express gratitude only when you feel it. Give
thanks especially when you don’t feel it. Rebel against the emotional
“authenticity” that holds you back from your bliss. As for me, I am
taking my own advice and updating my gratitude list. It includes my
family, faith, friends and work. But also the dappled complexion of my
bread-packed bird. And it includes you, for reading this column.'
