My Rabbi, Yitz Wyne of Young Israel Aish of Las Vegas, constantly talks about gratitude…how grateful we must be for everything around us. Gratitude, the Rabbi tells us, is one of the keys to a more joyous life. So I thought I would list the many things we should all be grateful for at this particular time of year.
We should be grateful that we live in a country that boasts the changing of the guard through an electoral process. Many countries rely on the bullet or bullying…we rely on the ballot.
We should be grateful that our constitution delineates the fact that our rights are given to us by our creator and only protected by the government. The government does not give us our rights. Our rights are not derived from man. Truly understanding this fact gives us pause to show appreciation to our creator and to the government that upholds these “unalienable rights.”
We should be grateful to those people who volunteer to serve (or have served) in any capacity of any branch of the military that guard our safety and freedom. These are the true guardians of that piece of paper that reminds us from where our rights are born.
We should be grateful to the diminishing part of the media that actually reports the facts of any given story without adding editorial slants. This gives us the chance to make up our own minds for ourselves about any given issue. This unbiased reporting is a dying art and we should appreciate whatever opportunities we have to access it.
We should be grateful that as of this writing we have less than 14 months to potentially celebrate a new tenant taking up residence in the White House. We should be grateful for Barack Obama for his time spent in office that may have given us the impetus to elect his direct opposite. The gratitude for Barack Obama should be seen in the same capacity we should have viewed the one term of Jimmy Carter giving way to two terms of Ronald Reagan. If enough of us are unified, we will have the capacity to make that change a reality.
We should be grateful for our families, our religious communities of support, our friends and those who are allied with us in keeping this country a free republic.
We should be grateful that the words of the late Senator Barry Goldwater still ring true today: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
I am personally grateful to the thousands of you who emailed, texted and phoned on my behalf when I left the radio station I had broadcast from for 12 years and who promoted my resurfacing at a truly grateful station – Newstalk 720, KDWN. The transition has been wondrous and the New Year promises even more opportunities.
Please take a moment to think about what you are thankful for on the Thanksgiving Holiday of gratitude. I’ll bet you can come up with your own list.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone from my entire family.