THANKSGIVING - Be grateful for what you are taking for granted.

A few days from now we will celebrate one of our favorite holidays, Thanksgiving. Contrary to popular belief this holiday, initiated in Plymouth Massachusetts in 1621 and not picked up again until President Lincoln made it a national holiday in 1863, is not just celebrated in the U.S. Many countries, including Italy, Brazil, Korea, Vietnam, India and China celebrate harvest. Canada remembers the arrival in 1578 of British explorer Arthur Frobisher who threw a meal for his crew when they, barely, made it to Canadian shores. The Netherlands celebrates in honor of the pilgrims leaving Leyden for the new world. Liberia celebrates American style, but without the turkey.

Many countries generalize popular gratitude. Our Thanksgiving dinners often feature a simple question: "What are you thankful for?" Even though we should expect this conversation, we are often still caught off base. Aside from family focused experiences and feelings we are grateful for, we might consider expressing gratitude for some of the so-called simple things we have in our lives.

If you have a roof over your head - Be thankful!

   In the U.S. more than 3.5 million people experience homelessness each year. This includes 2.5 million children, and 16% of homeless adults are veterans.

If you are having a great meal with family and friends, and if, by chance, you are serving one or more of the 52,000,000 turkeys consumed in our country each Thanksgiving day - Be grateful!

   805 Million people in the world are chronically under-nourished. 18,000 Children die every day from hunger and malnutrition.

If you have clean water and if you are able to enjoy hot showers - Be thankful!

   63 Million people (1 in 10) lack access to safe water. 2,000 Kids under the age of five  die each day from diseases related to contaminated water. That is 1 every 21 seconds! 1.8 Billion people who have access to a water source within 1 kilometer, but not in their house or yard, consume on average 20 liters per day. In the U.S. we use 600 liters a day, which is the highest in the world.

I am certain we can come up with many other experiences we take for granted, and which we could give some intellectual and emotional perspective. The point is that most of us are better off than a substantial number of people in the owrld. While recognizing that even in the U.S. 48 million citizens live below the poverty line - 16 million of which are childeren and 5 million seniors - almost all of us are taking things for granted many others can only dream of. We should be grateful for living where we are and for everything we take for granted. Due to the accident of birth or the ability to choose you are living in one of the most comfortable places in the world, whatever its faults and however much we bicker over how to distribute our resources. We are lucky. After all, the odds of being born American, according to a 2005 W.H.O. report, are only 5%. In fact, given what is involved in the reproductive process, the odds of you coming into the world at all are only about 1 in 400 trillion (Harvard study.)

Finally, certainly not last, we should be thankful for the bravery displayed by the men and women we sent into harm's way. They face danger every day. Many of them will spend the holidays away from their family in the various war zones we are still, and again, involved in. Some of them will pay the ultimate price defending all the things we are thankful for.

With that in mind I think we should all read and re-read the prayer Eleanor Roosevelt carried with her throughout Worl War II:

Dear Lord,

Lest I continue

My complacent way,

Help me to remember that somewhere,

Somehow out there

A man died for me today.

As long as there be war,

I then must

Ask and answer

Am I worth dying for?

Go look at yourself in a mirror and answer the question.

Happy Thanksgiving!