If you want reminders today to give thanks, go outside. Go outside with your eyes wide open. It doesn’t count if you go out to do work or to look at how badly the paint on your house is peeling. It has to be a vacation, the way little kids do it. When they go outside, they see things. They can stare at a bug or look for crayfish in a stream or run up and down a hill forever. Just by enjoying it all, they’re saying thank you without saying anything at all.
Here’s the invitation: go outside. Be a kid for five minutes. Look around. Drink in the color. Close your eyes and feel the wind on your face. Do nothing. If you’re too busy for five minutes of being a kid, you’re too busy.
“This past summer, I made a point to catch sunsets. I would ride my motorcycle up Mount Tabor and sit on the steps of the reservoir to watch the sun put fire in the clouds that are always hanging over Portland. I never really wanted to make the trip; I would want to watch television or make a sandwich, but I made myself go. And once I got up there I always loved it. . . . All that beauty happens right above the heads of more than a million people who never notice it.” Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller