As we celebrate Thanksgiving, let’s try to remember that the day is about more than just turkey and stuffing; it’s about expressing our gratitude for all the things we have. Thomas Jefferson believed that when we see other people showing gratitude and other virtues, we are more likely to exhibit those virtues ourselves. He wrote:
“Everything is useful which contributes to fix us in the principles and practice of virtue. When any signal act of charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable and grateful acts also. On the contrary, when we see or read of any atrocious deed, we are disgusted with its deformity and conceive an abhorrence of vice. Now every emotion of this kind is an exercise of our virtuous dispositions; and dispositions of the mind, like limbs of the body, acquire strength by exercise. But exercise produces habit, and in the instance of which we speak, the exercise being of the moral feelings, produces a habit of thinking and acting virtuously.”
So, just as Jefferson said, let’s set a good example tomorrow and have an “attitude of gratitude.”
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