I have spent years describing things as lucky, such as when your neighbor gets something that you wanted, or when your best friend wins One Direction tickets two years in a row, when you get a good parking spot, find 10 dollars in your pocket, or when you get a free coffee in the morning.
Luck is a huge part of my vocabulary - who knows how many times a day I refer to things as lucky. But I don’t believe in luck. At the end of the day, I believe in being blessed, and I believe in karma - getting out of the world what you put into it. There’s a million ways to say this, like "what goes around comes around", "you get what you give", and from a religious standpoint, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. I believe in every single one of them.
As the holiday season approaches, we look at the world a little differently. We listen to the Christmas carols telling us it is the greatest time of year, to spread joy, and we obey them. People love the holidays because they are being loved, showing love and joy, and spreading happiness. If we lived like this all the time, and if every day was Christmas, we would all be a lot happier (and probably a lot fatter, but that is besides the point).
With Thanksgiving quickly approaching, we have a day ahead of us to look back on all the things we are “lucky” to have. Whether you believe in a God or not, you received those things for a good reason. I don’t think the world believes in handouts.
So spread love early and spread love a little extra hard because the world needs it - everyone you see needs it. Tell the people you love how grateful you are for them, because that is the point of these holidays. I a, sure when black Friday rolls around our bank accounts would appreciate it if we all worked a little harder to remember all the things we do have, and not the things we want so badly now that they are so much cheaper!
The point is, we all have a million things to be grateful for: your family, your friends, the strangers who hold the doors for you, your coworkers who make work a little less of a job (or even the ones who make work more of a job than you care to deal with), your classmates, your kids, your significant other. We are all blessed or lucky if that is what you believe in, and we can all work hard to show every day that we are grateful.
The world moves faster than most of us care to think about, but the holidays remind us of the way we celebrated them as children. We can reminisce on the days before we had a life that required us to be thankful for the holidays because they give us a break from work.
It is hard to remember why we work everyday, or go to school, or do whatever it is that you do, but the answer is love. To make the world slightly less miserable for all the people you love. Your hard work and their hard work and all the things you have received because of it. The fact that you have people you care enough about to work hard for is all stuff we are “lucky” enough to be grateful for this year.
