♫ This night they taught me to believe
to offer thanks to all living things…♫

Lyrics and music by: Jack Swamp and Joanne L. Shenandoah, recorded by Joanne L. Shenandoah.

This is a post that Laura Calloway and I wrote for www.slawtips.ca.  I am grateful for the opportunity to post it here as well:

In writing this tip, we are cognizant that today is American Thanksgiving and that Canadian Thanksgiving was not all that long ago.  Of the authors, one of us is American and one is Canadian. Accordingly it seemed appropriate to focus today’s tip on the act of giving thanks.

What is giving thanks?  It is also called gratitude, thankfulness, gratefulness or appreciation. It is a feeling of genuinely and positively acknowledging the acts of another.  It costs nothing but means everything.  In some cases it can never be felt or acknowledged by those whose acts you are appreciating – such as being grateful for the selfless acts of another (such as acknowledging those who gave all at Remembrance Day).

It resonates in all major religions.  In Judaism, you are grateful for acts of human kindness and goodness.  The Eucharist is the most important rite in the Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican churches: the name arises from eucharistia – the Greek word for thanksgiving. In Islam, the month of fasting of Ramadan is intended to create a state of gratitude.

Studies have shown that grateful people have positive mental health: they are happier, less depressed, less stressed and have more satisfaction with their life.  They sleep better.  They cope better. Grateful people are more likely to sacrifice individual gains for community well-being. They are altruistic.

Can you increase or enhance your sense of gratitude?  Studies have shown that the act of writing and delivering a letter of gratitude has a big effect on improving someone’s short-term quality of life.  Longer term effects are generated by writing and keeping a gratitude journal – or daily record of three things you are thankful for each day. Participants in these studies voluntarily continued their gratitude journals long after the study was over.

We can set our deeds to the music of a grateful heart, and seek to round our lives into a hymn — the melody of which will be recognized by all who come in contact with us, and the power of which shall not be evanescent, like the voice of the singer, but perennial, like the music of the spheres.

(William Mackergo Taylor, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 290.)

(this was originally posted on http://tips.slaw.ca/2012/practice/giving-thanks/).