One thing that we Africans excel in, by culture, is pleasing personality. We are socialized to bottle in much and be sensitive to the feelings of others. The risk is that if we do not develop self-discipline and a keen desire to achieve highly, we get conditioned into subservience.
Thanksgiving may not bring us what we want, but it assures us peace. When you focus on thanksgiving instead of complaints, you start noticing the good things in your life – even things you hardly knew existed. Gratitude introduces abundance in our lives. We feel free because we realize we don't really need all the stuff we are tempted with.
In my depression story, many of my wounds, as far as I can tell or remember, have been self-inflicted.
If I mourned a lost friendship, broken relationship or bad circumstance, I could almost always trace it back to a deliberate selfish decision that I had made in the past.