Most of us celebrate Thanksgiving, but how many of us really celebrate giving thanks?

I’ve been going to Al-Anon meetings for 42 years. While they’re always cathartic and relevant, my favorite are gratitude meetings. They are rarely scheduled as such, but once in a while someone will express gratefulness for the positive things in their life – sometimes it’s only one or two things – and it rolls and grows through the room like a snowball.

It’s a beautiful thing. People living in the shadow of addiction, often suffering disappointment and abuse at the hands of those who should not do so, finding those things that make them blessed despite their less-than-favorable circumstances.

“Reflect upon your present blessings — of which every man has many — not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some,” Charles Dickens wrote.

Sounds like Dickens just came from an Al-Anon meeting.

Often gratitude is simply a matter of perception. Imagine you’re riding in a car along Colorado’s front range on Interstate 25. Look one way and you see beautiful mountains highlighted by a blazing sunset. Look the other way and you have bland prairie, often with unsightly trash along the roadside.

Both are real. You choose which one to look at. If you look at the beauty, then the world is full of wonder and possibilities. If you choose to look at the trash, the world is ugly and hopeless.

The families, friends and others affected by an addict or alcoholic often get lost in the disease. We wallow in the misery that person’s condition brings us.

“While these loved ones may not meet our expectations, it is our expectations, not our loved ones, that have let us down,” says the book “One Day at a Time in Al‑Anon II.”

These are wise words, but hard to follow. A disappearance, an arrest or a total disregard for your feelings by the addict/alcoholic is hard to abide. The pain is real. But you have the power to give it proper perspective. You didn’t cause this and you can’t cure it.

“I must learn to give those I love the right to make their own mistakes and recognize them as theirs alone,” the aforementioned book says.

It also says:

“If I continue to do what I have always done, I will continue to get what I have always gotten.”

So we go to meetings. We talk with others who have walked – or are currently walking – in our shoes. Sometimes we laugh. Sometimes we cry. But each and every time, we are transformed in some way. Usually, it’s small like the tiny dewdrop that refreshes a single leaf. Sometimes, it’s a lightning bolt that alters the entire landscape.

And once in a while, we stumble into a meeting and the gratitude begins to flow.

“A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all the other virtues,” Cicero said.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I hope you are able to give thanks.