As the Thanksgiving Holiday draws closer by the hour, we see
on many social media networks people asking friends to post what they are
thankful for. This is certainly the
perfect season to be pensive of what we appreciate and to share that gratitude
with our friends and family as we all get together and reconnect this upcoming
weekend. There is plenty in my life that
I am grateful for, and the ease of creating such a list is something in and of
itself I am thankful for. I won’t bore
you with my full inventory here, but as I watched others post their thankful lists
on Facebook, some by the day, others by the week, I started to notice a
pattern. I noticed that so many things
were related to family, pets, jobs, and all around very positive feel-good type
things. This got me to start thinking (not
in a scrooge bah-humbug way) but what about the not-so-good things; can we be
thankful for those too? In that moment,
I found this week’s blog.
I started to think about the potential for being thankful
for the unconventional not-so-good things that people usually aren’t thankful
for. I wondered if I could still be
thankful for some of those things even though in the moment it was painful and
difficult and the answer was, “Yes”.
You’re probably thinking I went off the deep end and how could that be
so, but it’s possible. I’ve written
about finding a silver lining in a previous post titled ‘When Life Happens…’
but this is something a little bit different.
I’m referring to being thankful for something after the event or occurrence
has happened in a reflection for how it has contributed to making us a better
and stronger person, not just finding something positive in the moment to get
through it. I’m also not saying you
should be thankful for every bad thing that has happened to you, but there are
some that might not be as bad when we look back on it.
A prime personal example of that was the end of my dream of
becoming a doctor. As a child, adults
always ask, “What you want to be when you grow up?”. For as long as I can remember my answer was
consistently ‘A doctor’. In college my
experiences coaching youth basketball, volunteering as a mentor for kids, and
substitute teaching narrowed my answer down to ‘A Pediatrician’. The next thing I knew I was walking across
the stage with a Pre-Med Physiology degree, but I had received rejection letters
from the medical schools that I applied to.
Instead of becoming a Pediatrician, I pursued a Master’s Degree in
Health Communications. While in that
program I was an Assistant Hall Director and discovered and built a career in
Student Affairs. I couldn’t have been more
thankful for those med. school rejection letters because student affairs
(Residence Life to be specific) was where I had some of the most amazing
experiences, and met an abundance of wonderful people, staff and students. At the time yes, the rejection letters were
devastating, but I could never have predicted such a bright light at the end of
the tunnel and looking back on it, I am thankful for what it lead to.
When asked what we are thankful for we tend to focus on the easy
things that make us happy and that are positive. There’s nothing wrong with
that because that’s great, I always encourage positivity. But it’s also important to reflect on the
tough times that have made us who we are today.
The things many people focus on as regrets, are instead the events and
occurrences that have given us an opportunity to be stronger, smarter, and
better people. I’m not saying you should
ruin your Thanksgiving by flooding your thoughts with bad stuff that has
happened to you. However it is important
to think about the things that have made you who you are today, that may not
have been ideal at the time but now could be something you would be thankful
for happening because without it, you would never be who you are today. We should learn to live our lives with no
regrets. Stop looking back and saying “I
could’ve, would’ve, should’ve”. The bottom
line is that it happened, and you can move forward carrying with you the
knowledge and experience gained to make your own life and the lives of others
better. We can be thankful for those times
as well as everything else that is feel-good and positive.
