For a few minutes this weekend, most of us will set aside some time to ponder the things we're grateful for.
Good health, we'll say. Or, if we're being particularly insightful, we'll be thankful for the food on the table, the pay cheque that allowed us to buy it and the good fortune to have a home to serve it all in.
And then we'll get back to eating turkey and feeling disgruntled about something or other, wishing we had a better car or more money in the bank.
How quickly we forget that, as residents of one of the wealthiest countries in the world, we enjoy freedom, liberty and access to education and health care that is unparalleled. Here at The Record we are regularly reminded of the trials experienced by people in other parts of the world through the stories we cover - like the Sudanese family living in New Westminster who had spent eight years in a refugee camp and didn't know how a stove worked when they first arrived.
Or the local man who wrote a memoir about his experiences as a "Lost Boy" in Sudan, fleeing his village during civil war and walking six weeks to an Ethiopian refugee camp.
Or the Afghani family - a mother and her five children - who arrived here from a war-torn country with no education and psychological scars that will last for years. Or the young girl, adopted from Haiti, who sold 'dirt cookies' (dirt and vegetable shortening biscuits made by poverty stricken Haitians to feel their empty stomachs) as part of a fundraiser for her home country.
We don't recall these stories to suggest that we in Canada should simply be grateful for our lot in life and never work to improve injustices, or that there aren't many people suffering in terrible ways in this country, too. It's simply a reminder that things we often don't consider being grateful for are non-existent in some places in this world: running water, electricity, public education, peace.
So dig deep and ponder gratitude this weekend - and what kind of responsibility it leaves us with.
