Are you all there is? Is everything you are and everything you have the result of your efforts? Are you alive because of something you did? Is the fact that you are alive “payment” for who you are and what you have? It is human I think to look at ourselves ultimately as the center of this thing we call Creation, or Being, or Universe (however you may define it.) I am because I am.
I would like to offer you something.
Have you ever thought about giving thanks for all you are and all you have; for your friends and family? Sometimes life gets hard and there is hurt, but I cannot help but ask, in spite of all that can and does happen to us, is there not SOMETHING for which we can give thanks in the midst of it all?
The cool part about giving thanks is that when you give thanks, you admit that you are not the center of your universe. You admit that who you are and what you have in the way of gifts and talents is not the result of your own doing. When you give thanks you admit some OTHER exists. Giving thanks is an outward looking, not inward. Giving thanks expresses appreciation of the fact that no one can claim ownership of life and no one can make meaning on their own. Giving thanks admits that no human being is responsible for being here in the first place. Giving thanks is the admission of purpose; that we exist for a reason; that we are given the gifts we have for a reason. Looking upward is important to do rather than just inward.
Whomever the God is that exists for you, whatever name you give that God, giving thanks is the admission that there is a God; that purpose and meaning are not for any of us to create but to find.
And when we do it is important to give thanks.