Attitude of Gratitude Thanksgiving

En Garde in the bunker…

It is an historical truth that the early-arriving colonists very nearly didn’t survive. The first few years they attempted to farm collectively, in that everything harvested was pooled and shared by all. Anyone in need (or as it turned out, lazy) could take as much as they desired while enjoying a grand old lifestyle at the expense of the labor of others.

Problem was you see, that some decided they didn’t want to work very hard (if at all) for the collective, while fully expecting to be allowed to partake of the fruits of the labor just the same.

(Bet you never even thought that some of those early arrivals were already DemoMarxists, did you?!)

But I digress – Thankfully Governor Bradford switched course and gave each person/family an entrepreneurial plot of their own, thus developing the incentive for the entire group to work hard and prosper accordingly. It was only then, that the colony fully took off.

RWR and God were never far apart, if ever...

RWR and God were never far apart…

As a lesson in Civics however, that short and simple story of the Pilgrims became the first recorded failure of Socialism in the New World.

Full disclosure up front that in a fraction of my own earlier life, I was one of the most egregious of the ungrateful (pride will do that to you), but thankfully throughout the rest of my (now getting to be) long life, I have come to truly believe that a lack of gratitude is one of the biggest sins that human beings commit. The turning point for yours truly in how a person views the world and their place in it, was by my adopting an ‘attitude of gratitude’ basically to everything around me.

It wasn’t rocket science by any means, since the formula I discovered became very simply an attitude towards ‘the more you give, the more you get rewarded’. As I described the other day in my birthday post (link down below) I became thankful for every day of life by adopting an ‘attitude of gratitude,’ as well as going all out to allow God to control every facet of my activities.

Now before y’all become mushy on me, let me direct you to a neat piece from Robert Knight in American Thinker, still in my archives from a few years ago – ‘The Indispensable Benefits of Gratitude’, the original version of which is linked down below…

284px-American_Thinker_logoTalk show host and movie critic Michael Medved once told a cultural conference in Washington that people could be divided into two basic groups — those who are grateful to God and those who are not.

For the ungrateful, the day begins with new complaints about their sorry state, which is usually someone else’s fault. Check out any elite, mob-besieged campus for the latest evidence.

For those filled with gratitude, however, life begins each day with a simple thanks to God for another day of life and the hope that God will bless their endeavors throughout the day.

The Pilgrims are credited with celebrating the nation’s first Thanksgiving in 1621, the year after the Mayflower landed. Despite having lost numerous souls during the voyage and after a harsh winter, they gathered for a feast with several dozen Indians at Plymouth, Massachusetts to thank God following their first harvest.

Farther south, in the nation’s first English colony of Jamestown, which was founded in 1607, historians have chronicled many days devoted to thanksgiving, beginning in 1610.

More than a century and a half later, Benjamin Franklin, whose invocation of prayer turned around a stalled constitutional convention at the dawn of a new nation, reminded himself and his countrymen to be thankful for providential blessings great and small. He saw gratitude as indispensable to mental and societal health. As for its opposite, he said bluntly that “ingratitude is one of the most odious of vices.”

First Amendment set in stone...

First Amendment set in stone…

One of Franklin’s many recorded prayers includes this passage: “Let me not be unmindful to acknowledge the favours I receive from Heaven …. For all Thy innumerable benefits; for life and reason, and the use of speech, for health and joy and every pleasant hour, my Good God, I thank thee.”

We are truly blessed to live in a free and prosperous nation, which, for all its faults, still has a large number of grateful citizens who understand just how rare and precious it is.

Looking around at the rest of the world, it’s getting easier every day to make the case for American exceptionalism and the enduring importance of our Christian heritage.

True ‘attitude of gratitude’ is very positive for the human psyche as it has a humbling effect upon our personality, and just who among us doesn’t need to be humbled from time to time?

Therefore I will take this opportunity to say ‘Happy Thanksgiving 2018’ to you all. We should be grateful for each other and that we have a place where we can congregate each day, knowing full well that there are others like us who love God, the United States of America, the freedoms we have, and the lifestyle we are privileged to embrace because of the freedoms endowed to us from those pioneering patriots who’ve gone before.

Thank you for giving me a place I can come to daily that helps to keep my hope alive for the Constitutional Republic of the United States of America and the precious principles and values upon which it was founded.

May you all truly appreciate every positive facet of your lives today, tomorrow and on, and on, and on … Keep on keeping on with that ‘attitude of gratitude’!

Time for today’s MAGA Pill – President Donald J. Trump – MAGA!

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See also Thanksgiving Proclamation

And birthday post: Moses, Golden age of ‘Age’, plus five

Archived Robert Knight and The Indispensable Benefits of Gratitude