How long can you be grateful for?

For years I have admired the tradition of Thanksgiving. The idea that you take time to come together with your people and be active in your gratitude.

This year is my first American Thanksgiving and while the stores are already smothered in everything Christmas I am not distracted. I decided to make the 26 days of Thanksgiving- one day for every year of me. Not a daunting thought, I knew it would feel great to actually do something with all my gratitude. 

So everyday I choose one thing I am grateful for that. I find a corresponding photo and add the essence of my gratitude to the photo in a simply line or two of text. Then I post it on facebook and tag my friends that generate those situations in my life

I’m on day 3. It hasn't been hard; it’s been an absolute pleasure. So I was blow away today when a dear friend of mine said, "How's it going? How long are you doing it for? 26 days? I don’t know how I could find something everyday."

And all my brain could process was "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?" you can't write a list right now of 26 things you are grateful for? That leaves me with 2 questions;

1) What is life like for you? 

2) How did you get to be one of my best friends if you think like that? 

I think a fundamental component is perspective. It’s like you are in high-rise apartments. You look out your window and you can’t control the scene; the city layout, the weather or the time of day. But you control what you don’t see.

It’s when you know that there is something out there that you want to see but you can’t quite get the perspective on it from your window that you have the chance to learn the great expanse of potential ways of seeing something available to you.

Maybe you just need to open the curtains. Or maybe you need to go to another floor or even up to the roof for the best vantage point. We all have time where we have to call room service and ask for some help to get us to the best viewing point. These days the first step for many of us is to turn off the TV, put down our smart phones and actually LOOK out the window. And notice what we see.

Last month I saw an exhibition called “Through my Window” by Korean photographer Ahae. He spent 3 years and took 1 million photos from one window in his house. Upon seeing the diverse landscapes, season and activity captured in his photos my question was “how big was his window?” the answer: “regular, as big as yours.”

Here are my 26 days of Thanksgiving.

So there are my 26 days of Thanksgiving. At least half of the 3.5 weeks I was having a challenging time and some days I found it harder than I ever expected to find my contribution to this project for that day.  Sometimes I was boarder line resentful I had set myself this task but it always brought good things and mostly I was excited to do it. To search for those things, choose just one to represent my day and think of a photo to pair it with. 

I learnt this lesson which has already proved its value:

It's not always about having something amazing happen each day to be thankful for. Sometimes I need to reflect on something that wasn't bad and be thankful it happened; because without it my day would have been worse. 

And something I realized many moons ago:

Happiness and positivity are not the same thing; but being positive and grateful sure help lead me to happiness. 

Thanks for reading ;)