Blessings Be. Give or Take a Hundred Years.

Blessings be to you and yours on this day of Thanks.

Yes, I know. It's officially the Holiday Season.
Revered, anticipated, and dreaded all at the same time.

In the U.S., if you consider almost any traditional "Holiday", you'll find negative aspects of the holiday that never occurred to us when we were on break from school as children; hyper-commercialism, stress from additional tasks, family baggage, depression, or activities that are downright inconsistent to the original point of the Holiday.

But today is Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. ... so...yes, I am Thankful for:

• My job (sometimes frustrating but always interesting and challenging), 
• My friends (unique, kind, talented, and oddly tolerant of my foibles), 
• My DH, 
• My feline kids, 
• My birth family (admirable individuals), 
• My Country (Sometimes we're a bit of a selfish lot, but we do freedom reasonably well and we can be inspirationally generous), and
• My much-taken-for-granted health. 
• And Blessings Be to the world for Knitting!! {Happy sigh!} 

And then my brain wanders off to marvel at other things for which I am Thankful - and I pause to consider how all of these things are very new or only recently readily available to the average person.
(!!And sometimes still not available here or in some parts of the world - think about it!!)
These things were literally unheard of 100 years ago or only available to the very, very rich.
What about 75 years ago? 50? 

• This much growled-at PC that actually does labor reasonably well for me.
• Satellites.
• The Internet (Blogger? Ravelry? Wikipedia? NetFlix? Google Maps? Spell Check!).
• Television. Radio.
• The right to Vote.
• Plastic.* 
• Air Flight. Space Flight.
• Mechanical Wonders (Automobiles and Crock pots, Clothes Washing Machines, and what about all the medical mechanical wonders...?) 
• * Chemistry/biological wonders. (Antibiotics? Chemo-therapy? DNA Mapping?)
• My ongoing education and curiosity of the world (What would I have been allowed (or had time) to study 100 years ago?)
• "Stash" (books, fabric, yarn...more books). (50 years ago "stash" was primarily used to describe a cache of drugs - sad.)
• A ready supply of chocolate in many forms and flavors (Yeah, think about that one!)
• Central Heating/Air Conditioning!?!
• Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream!
• Heck - INDOOR PLUMBING!??!
• The list goes on and on...and yet how much am I still taking for granted?

That perspective increases the Thankfulness at least 1000-fold, does it not?

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. May we be more appreciative of our many blessings.