Our friend Michelle Karren taught a lesson in Young Women this month that has had me thinking ever since. She said that on Thanksgiving, her family has a tradition of giving thanks around the dinner table for 101 things. They can be big things, such as life and love, or little things, such as indoor plumbing.

I think of indoor plumbing as a big thing, but I guess I’m in the minority on that one.

Michelle illustrated how easy it is to come up with 101 things to be grateful for by giving the girls a bunch of areas. She went from girl to girl, and each of them fired off something in that area that made them happy. Some of the categories included these:

• Living relatives
• Dead relatives
• Friends
• Historical figures you admire
• Nature
• Technology
• Things about home
• Good things to eat
• Favorite places

You could add a whole lot of other categories, too. Once there’s a structure like that, it’s easy to come up with things that you consider to be blessings. I could come up with 101 people just in the “friends” department. Ditto the “historical figures one.” And when it comes to things of nature, I could go all day.

Heck, I could come up with 101 things I’m grateful for about Fluffy. There’s a lot of stuff in my life that needs to be recognized and thanked.

Initially, Michelle had me act as a counter. When she got ten answers in each category, she went on to another one. But the girls got so excited with their contributions that Michelle quickly stopped having me cut them off when the tenth answer was spoken. After all, if the purpose of the lesson was to show that there’s an unlimited number of things to be grateful for, why limit people from expressing that gratitude?

All I can say was, the lesson was a wild success.

I liked Michelle’s lesson, but even more than that, I liked her tradition of expressing gratitude for “the 101.” I’ve been focusing on gratitude all month, thanks to her. For a while, I wondered what my 101 would be. Then I decided 1,001 would not be enough. There’s just so much in this world to be grateful for.

There’s a quote you’ve probably seen lately that I’ve thought about many times since Michelle’s lesson. Here it is:

I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to stop with the 101. That’s a good place to start, but I there are too many things to be grateful for that I don’t want to risk leaving even one of them out.