In light of the Thanksgiving season, I wanted to dig a bit deeper in my understanding of what it means to be thankful. Maybe a new way we can think of thankfulness is not merely over a turkey dinner, a conversation or a question.

In this quest, finding the small things we can be thankful for and recognizing how we can use these small things to encourage others are two elements of thankfulness that we ought to consider.

Identifying the value of Thanksgiving, W.T. Purkiser, a preacher, scholar and author, eloquently said, “Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.”

When thinking out loud, the common response to the question “what are you thankful for” relates to emotional relationships and physical necessities. For example, thankfulness for one’s family, house, job and friends.

But what if the act of being thankful is more of daily tool rather than a day set aside in remembrance of the things we have?

Of course, it is unrealistic to expect people to maintain a grateful mindset every minute of each day, with the exception that you are a robot obtaining specific programming in gratefulness.

Still, it’s possible to be mindful of what we have, a possibility not requiring robotic genetics.

For instance, these daily moments can be grasped by allowing a subject of conversation to spark a remembrance of something you didn’t always have. This recognition can also work in reverse, and we can be thankful that we never were without something or someone.

Another way to find moments of thankfulness is by finding something little that you use every day, without which you know life would be more difficult. For instance, these little things can be finding that book you needed for an assignment, remembering one of the hundred passwords for a login or when another person takes the time to ask about something tedious that they knew was bugging us.

These examples all share the ability to invoke thankfulness at any given moment, we need only embrace them.