It's not the turkey alone we're grateful for. Not the cranberry sauce or the stuffing or even the pumpkin pie. Some of the people seated at the table are strangers —friends of friends, cousins of in-laws—and some axe almost desperately familiar, faces we live and work with every day.

In any other week, today would merely be Thursday and the gathering of all these people—the cooking and serving and cleaning—a chore. But today it doesn't feel that way. The host—perhaps it's you—stands up and asks that we give thanks, and we do, each in our own way. And what we're thankful for is simply this, the food, the shelter, the company and, above all, the sense of belonging.

As holidays go, Thanksgiving is in some ways the most philosophical. Today we try not to take for granted the things we almost always take for granted. We try, if only in that brief pause before the eating begins, to see through the well-worn patterns of our lives to一what lies behind them. In other words, we try to understand how rich we are, whether we feel very rich or not Today is one of the few times most Americans consciously set desire aside， if only because desire is incompatible with the gratitude—not to mention the abundance—that Thanksgiving summons.