A note of Thanksgiving

The Thanksgiving holiday is one smothered in a thick, savory gravy of excess. The prevailing idea of the day is to celebrate and acknowledge our abundance - and to feast together in an expression of sharing and revelry.

Yet, historically, many Thanksgiving celebrations were set to mark the emergence from a hardship. A prolonged drought, community illness, war, fasting, or some other form of sacrifice.

If hardship is the precursor to Thanksgiving, there’s much reason to be grateful. The past several years have been by any account difficult. We’ve been presented with new and unique challenges that have strained the social fabric of our communities, country, and world. And the emergence from one crisis has seemingly created another series of concerns that continue to apply pressure on all of us.

Commercially, it seems Thanksgiving is the forgotten holiday - unceremoniously crammed between Halloween and Christmas. Admittedly there might be more money to be made on either of those two holidays - particularly Christmas, which in my view has become a bastardized version of itself in the past several decades - but Thanksgiving still holds the promise of its original intent: To express gratitude.

I am thankful and grateful for many things in my life. But mostly for the people in it.

“I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

No matter what role you play in my life, know that I am grateful for you - and I will be thinking of you today. When I consider my life, I find great comfort and warmth when I think of the people with whom I get to share this space in time. I feel lucky to be alive the same time as you, and to share a physical community with you. I am grateful for every conversation, every shared meal, every conversation over a good craft beer, and every random encounter, where ever it might occur.

It’s easy, I think, to allow our minds to fall into a negative space. I know it is for me. And I suspect there’s an evolutionary function in which our brains are wired to detect and remember the dangers around us - a helpful function when humans were ill-equipped prey for larger animals, but far less useful in our developed time. The world is tumultuous, uncertain, and, at times, scary. It sometimes feels as if change comes at us faster than we can process it, and that all can feel like a real threat to our wellbeing.

And that’s why the exercise of Thanksgiving is so important. A quiet moment to reflect on the good in our world, and in our lives. To remember that maybe the world isn’t as bad as we think it, and that there are those with whom we share our lives that enrich it, aid it, and help paint a vibrant canvass of feeling and memory.

Thank you for being a part of my life. And thank you for helping make my existence brighter, more interesting, and richer than it would have been without you.

Happy Thanksgiving!