The “Thanksgiving Cure”

Few things in life are as genuine and sunny and appealing as a thankful heart.  What can one do to possess one?  How can we be thankful when reasons for gratitude escape us?

The English physician and novelist, Archibald Cronin, told how a colleague of his used to regularly prescribe a “thanksgiving cure” to his patients suffering from clinical depression.  The six-week-long “cure” required them to give thanks and smile at anyone that did them even the slightest of favors. 

Every so often, a patient would retort, “But Doctor, no one does me any favors!  “Seek and you will find!”, went the kind but firm response from the prescribing physician.

The good doctor’s prescription has not lost any of its efficacy.  If we seek diligently and sincerely through our present and our past, we will have no difficulty finding sufficient reasons to be thankful to God and to friends and even to strangers who have tried to help us at some point in our lives. 

If we knew the full truth, we would be thankful even for the “bad” things that come our way.  Because, truth be told, the reason we today are more resilient and kinder and more generous in spirit is because we know how tough life can be; we know it because we have skin in the game of life; we know that even the best of us can experience sudden and paralyzingly-crushing tragedy.  And we know that “there but for the grace of God go I.” 

You have probably heard the aphorism attributed to Nietzsche: whatever does not kill you, makes you stronger.  And I would add, it also makes you more noble and compassionate and understanding.  Which is why Saint Paul can rightfully declare: “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).