Ah, Thanksgiving - big turkeys eating big turkeys under the guise of gratitude, most times accompanied by griping and complaining about the (pick your favourite) weather, our crummy boss (although no one from the Coast Reporter would ever do that) or the fact that most of our clothes no longer fit.
Imagine what this holiday must be like in other parts of our country. Imagine being a drug addict and gratitude taking the form of a shuddering gasp as a needle goes in your arm.
Imagine being one of the many ill with a disease that doesn't respond to pharmaceuticals, so your cure is not high on the to-do list of researchers looking for the big drug company bucks.
Imagine being a kid grateful to, at last, be in a home where you're no longer being used as a punching bag - there should be a special day of gratitude to caring foster parents everywhere.
And what does Thanks-giving Day look like around our great Earth?
Probably pretty good if your postal code is in one of the affluent areas of North America. For some, the biggest concern on this day is whether to have white or dark meat or to throw the diet out the window and have both - preferably drowned in a mountain of good gravy. However, if you wanted to check in on many of our fellow humans around the world, you'd probably find it was a different story. Nothing new there - heaven knows, we've all seen the pictures of starving folks. It's (almost) enough to make us choke on our turkey. And all those skinny people dying from AIDS - aren't we glad we're not them?
For most of us, "thanks" is an almost meaningless word. We learn it as babies. And while we know it makes life easier to say it, how often do we really mean it?
How about if we make this a Thanksgiving to remember? We can start by taking any extra produce we have to the food banks on the Sunshine Coast. We can buy a couple of extra cans of high protein food and donate them to the food banks. We can help others both in our own country and abroad with cash donations. We can even stop complaining about the boss.
And above all we can bow our heads, says thanks and mean it.
