Thanksgiving. Where do I begin? The heaps of food, the bustling of family and friends, the sharing of thanks. All three combined make a wonderful Thanksgiving meal. This Thanksgiving, while eating my mashed potatoes and turkey, I thought about what I was really thankful for. Everyone is grateful for her family, friends, pets and a safe comfortable home. But why aren’t we thankful for the more mundane things, like shampoo or a bed? We don’t ever stop to think and thank our phone charger for rejuvenating our phones every night or our forks for being a delightful transport of food. While being thankful for these material goods seems superficial, we can say how grateful we are for the small things that make our daily life easier.

Although pencils and lamps aren’t as important as love or hope, which are the fundamentals of true happiness, these materials deserve a little gratitude as well. We should be grateful that we have these everyday goods, and that we don’t have to resort to charging our phones with a potato or using our hands to eat. Third-world countries are without these luxuries (as unluxurious as toilet paper seems to us, some of the world may still use leaves). We see a toothbrush or a roof as a mundane commodity, but we should be gracious and thankful that we do see them as a daily necessity and not a constant worry. So rather than feeling spoiled or indulgent by seeing shoes on our feet as a humdrum accessory, we can see the little things as objects to be thankful for in our everyday lives.