Thanksgiving

The boys show off the Native American headdresses they made at school.

Every year it gets harder for me to write a post about Thanksgiving, but not for the reason you’d think. As I get more grateful, it seems trivial to talk about giving thanks. I can’t find the words for it. Writing about Thanksgiving this time of year seems to limit it.

But today I came up with a way to write about giving thanks.

A couple of years ago, I wrote this post about gratitude. Using my camera to re-frame the world around me, I came to a slightly greater appreciation for the blessings I had been given.

I’ve learned a lot about gratitude this year. I’ve been studying it. Today it came to me that gratitude is like a lens. As any photo enthusiast knows, when you change your lens, you change the way the camera sees things. Some lenses compress distance, while others can magnify the distances between things. Even with one lens you can do vastly different things: set it to focus on everything, or to blur out everything except one very small part of the view.

As well as studying gratitude, I’ve been studying lenses. I’m in awe of some of the things they are coming out with these days. Who would have thought that, so many years after the camera lens was invented, they would still be improving the technology? Every time I try one of the new lenses, I’m amazed at the clarity. By letting in additional light, by allowing me more control over what I focus on, a beautifully constructed lens allows me to create additional beauty in my photos.

Gratitude does this, too. By letting in additional light, by more selectively choosing what to focus on in my world, gratitude does the same thing for my spirit, and for my life. I can create additional beauty. Just like with the lens, I have to make the right choices, and gratitude is the choice. It focuses on the beauty, the positive, the blessing. It’s not a head-in-the-clouds denial that there are terrible things in the world, and that these terrible things sometimes happen to those we care about. It’s simply a choosing, such as when a friend is lost, we choose to celebrate and rejoice that we had the chance to know them instead of getting stuck in grief and loss.

At the moment, I have a lot to be grateful for. I have had an amazing year. My clients have been a delight, and I’ve treasured every wedding and photo session. I have a sweet husband who is a great dad, wonderful children who surprise me every day with their understanding and insight, a comfortable home. I live in a beautiful state. People give me money to do something that I enjoy and that I’m good at. But occasionally I still get stuck. I look at others who I think are more successful and I lose the focus on my own blessings.

When I take photos, I have a principle I adhere to, and that I share with my assistants. Focus, click, focus again. Keep focusing again. If you are trying to attain that perfect focus, it’s an absolutely essential thing to practice. Just a tiny bump to the camera, a step back or forward, can make your focus a little less than perfect. It’s like that in life, too, isn’t it? We keep having to re-focus. Life pulls us away from any perspective we may have attained.

I hope that this week we all have a few minutes to be quiet, and to focus on blessings.

“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” – Philippians 4:8