Is your Thanksgiving plate half full or half empty?

Kaity Holtman

Is your Thanksgiving plate half full, or half empty this year?

If we’re talking the literal plate, mine goes from way too full to clean as a whistle way too fast.

Pass the pie, please. Any kind will do.

But as I’m just replacing the glass in the metaphor with a tasty plate of turkey and potatoes, it’s my hope that we’re all remembering to keep it on the full side this week, and all the time.

First, I must credit a friend of mine, Jeanette Schieber, with implanting this in my brain as she taught religious education in Conception Junction last Wednesday.

Since that class, I’ve been focused on being thankful more than I complain.

The challenge she gave us, and I give to each of you, is to find something we are thankful for every time we start to complain.

And what you might find — and what I definitely found — is that we complain way too much. I mean … Way. Too. Much. People.

It’s so easy to complain and focus on what went wrong in a situation or how someone acts that annoys us.

Complaining is so easy. Why is that?

Maybe it’s a negative society.

Maybe it’s that we’re afraid to correct others when they say negative things to us.

Maybe it’s that we are easily annoyed.

Maybe it’s that we are idealistic people who want everything to be perfect.

No matter the reason, we have to stop.

It starts with each of us, making a mental effort to stop complaining.

We have to admit that we complain, and not blame it on everyone around us.

Then we have to keep those around us accountable.

We have to be the good we wish to see in the world, to paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi.

How is being negative productive?

Constructive criticism is helpful. Just complaining is not. We have to recognize the difference and own up to which it is we are letting out of our mouths.

Of course, this time of year, it’s easy to list things for which we are thankful.

But then we totally reverse it if we sit at the Thanksgiving table, gossiping about others and complaining about things going wrong in life.

Not only is that harming us as individuals, the contagiousness of complaining probably leaves your dinner guests less happy than when they got there.

So this Thanksgiving, I challenge us to literally focus on only positive conversation around the dinner table or before you pass out on the couch for your afternoon nap.

My goal is, if I start to complain, to stop myself, and say what is good about the situation I was just complaining about.

We’ve all got struggles, and while it’s important to talk to people about those struggles, we can do it in such a way that encourages uplifting conversation that has a better chance of helping us through it instead of dragging us down.

Encourage others.

Stay determined to be uplifting.

Help them see the good.

Be the change.

Give thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving.