What Does Thanksgiving Mean to You?

Are you looking forward to Thanksgiving? Or do you dread the holiday? Thanksgiving can bring up many different emotions and unlock all types of memories for us. Of course, holidays are personal for each of us, and we each can choose to find individual meaning in them. Do you have certain Thanksgiving traditions?

Do you turn your phone off?

Will you disconnect for the day?

This week, Americans will endure flight delays, traffic jams and other logistical miseries to spend time with family and friends. And when the holiday weekend is ending, many will express that they didn’t get to spend enough time with those family members and friends.

But during the weekend itself, these same people will spend a lot of time ignoring the people around them and distractedly staring into their phones. They will get a notification and disappear down a digital rabbit hole of Facebook posts, text messages and fantasy football updates. They will monitor the comments on the photos they just posted, instead of engaging with the human beings in those photos.

Many of us have a complicated relationship with our phones. We enjoy them now. Yet when we reflect on all the time we spend looking at a tiny screen, we feel guilty.

So let me suggest this Thanksgiving weekend: TURN OFF YOUR PHONES and keep them off for a full 24 hours. I predict that you will be surprised by how much you’ll like it. I did that not long ago, for a visit with my family. It was invigorating and freeing being away from the digital world. I spent quality time with my family, communicating with them directly and not through text messages or social media posts. It became one of the best visits I have had in a long time. It takes some discipline to this because we are so conditioned and connected to our phones, but it was well worth the effort!

We all have busy lives; dedicate this day to the people that matter.

After all, we are supposed to be giving “Thanks.”

Wishing All A Very Happy Thanksgiving!

This Month’s Inspirational Quote:

Forever on this beautiful Thanksgiving

The heart will always find the pathway

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Judy😊