It was the weekend before Thanksgiving. The morning was cold, but the sun was out and slowly warming up the air and melting the frost off the grass. Lily and Daniela had set up a stand at the park near their houses to sell homemade cookies that they baked with their mothers the night before. Daniela was decorating the stand with colourful bunting while Lily was painting a sign that read “Help the blind and buy some cookies.”  The girls were planning to donate the money from the cookie sales to a charity organization that helps the visually impaired.

As the morning went by, many park visitors and morning joggers passed their stand, but none of them stopped to buy the cookies. By noontime, Lily and Daniela were getting disappointed. Suddenly, an old man who had been sitting in a nearby bench reading a newspaper got up and approached them. He told them that he had noticed their business was not doing so well, and proceeded to give them some advice on the wording of their sign. His words of wisdom dawned on Lily and she quickly repainted the sign. The old man smiled, nodded to the girls, and walked away. Soon after, their cookies sold like hotcakes and it was all gone within an hour.

The girls returned to Lily’s house where both their mothers were chatting over tea, and they told them about their morning and how the charity cookies sold extremely well after they followed an old man’s advice. When the moms asked what was the advice that the old man gave them, Daniela replied, “He pointed out that Thanksgiving is coming up, and asked us if we knew the true meaning of the holiday.”

“So I changed the sign to read ‘Today is a beautiful day, help the blind see it too,'” Lily said, “because the true meaning of Thanksgiving is to give thanks for what we have.”