It’s true.

We go around the table every year at Thanksgiving, before diving into the bird and potatoes and the jello I never eat, and we say what we’re thankful for. It occurred to me this morning that I’m thankful for nothing.

How ungrateful, you say. What an entitled little turd I must be, to be thankful for nothing.

Well, no. I meant no thing.

Because I’m thankful for whatever it is that tells us to buy a burrito for the strung-out guy who usually sits at the side of the southbound I-5 offramp. Whatever it is that tells us to pick up the empty cigarette pack some kid just threw out the window of his gray Honda Civic as he flew past us in the parking lot. Whatever it is that tells us to pay the bill for that girl eating by herself this Thanksgiving at the Pilot truck stop in Wells, Nevada on Highway 93.

Sometimes we listen to whatever it is, sometimes we don’t. And I don’t know if it’s God or Love or the Tao or what, but it doesn’t matter what we call whatever it is.

I just know it’s no thing.

I’ll be listening for it this holiday season. I hope you will be, too.