Driving home from work last night, I was thinking about what I was grateful for this Thanksgiving. As the answers came, and there were many, each one was tinged with guilt. I have so much to be grateful for that the abundance is embarrassing, and saying out loud all that I am thankful for makes me uncomfortable.
I have been looking at all of the social media posts from people expressing their thankfulness for their children and loved ones. It’s all very nice, and I also am thankful for those things. Most people are also grateful for their spouses, but one hopes that they are grateful for the right reasons. Most people say they are grateful for their parents. I am grateful for mine, and grateful that they are still alive. But then I start to examine whether my actions throughout the rest of the year support those words, and if I am being truthful, I have to admit that they do not. So I feel guilty. I begin to doubt myself…if family comes first, why am I still at work at 10:00 at night? If I am thankful for my parents, why do I get so impatient with them? Why don’t I help them more? Why am I not a better sister, mother, wife, friend? Suddenly, my recitation of what I am grateful for sounds hollow. If I open that door a crack, I am afraid the flood will drown me…
As I have gotten older, I have tried to think more like a “citizen of the world”. The result is that I am more prone to panic when I start to comprehend the enormity of the planet, and the scope of humanity’s problems. The internet and non-stop news cycles provide us the opportunity to see what is going on at any given minute, virtually anywhere on the globe. This is not necessarily a good thing. I know lots of people who have made the choice to block out all news, because it is all just too damn depressing. It is no wonder that kitten videos are so popular…the alternatives can crush your soul. I try to be grateful that we live in a (relatively) peaceful nation, and that for us, “the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air” is associated with picnics and pretty fireworks, not daily bombings that cause loss of life, limb, and livelihood. Yet, how can I be grateful for that, without acknowledging the suffering going on in so many other areas of the world?
I am thankful that I have the choice to cook Thanksgiving dinner, or go out for a meal. That there is money to pay for either one. That there is food in the stores, a choice of restaurants, that I have a vehicle and fuel to get me to one or the other, that I have clean clothes to wear to the meal, that I have people to share that meal with. Yet, how can I be thankful for all of those things, without also feeling sad that so many others that do not have those luxuries? Even the down and out in our country have it better than in other parts of the world…at least we have soup kitchens, food banks, missions. In third world countries, people would be shocked at what we throw away. Long ago, I read about children in some distant drought-stricken land, that wandered in groups looking for patches of green grass. The picture showed children ranging in age from infant to about 8 years old, and they had one dented pot with them. Their daily goal was to locate a patch of grass, from which they would pick a few blades, and use those precious blades of grass to make soup. Grass and water soup. They had the haunted look of starving children, and I have never been able to get that picture out of my mind. I watch my teenage son stand and stare into the pantry, which is overflowing, and say we have nothing good to eat. I think about those tiny children, wandering alone, looking for grass, making a fire to warm their meager meal, and it makes me want to weep with guilt and sorrow and a feeling of futility.
Logic says that if we feel guilty about something, we should do something to change it. But there is so much to change, it can make a person feel helpless. I am grateful for democracy, and I make use of my one vote. Without getting political, I have to wonder, how much does that one vote accomplish? In the end, it doesn’t matter who wins, if you think about the global perspective. Nothing will change the ideology of our enemies. There will always be terrorism and war and differences. There will always be starvation, suffering, and pain, somewhere in the world. We can vote, we can pray, we can donate what we are able of our time and resources, but it will never be enough. So to feel grateful requires a bit of selfishness, and maybe turning a blind eye. You’ve heard all the sayings about how one must experience sadness to truly feel happiness, but for most of us, no level of sadness can compare with the level of suffering going on elsewhere in the world.
Today is Thanksgiving only in our country. This morning, I thought about my oldest son, who is living in New Zealand, and wondered if I would talk with him today. For him, it is Friday, and a regular workday, and he may or may not remember that here, today is Thanksgiving. It is impossible for us to forget that today is Thanksgiving, because the reminders are coming at us constantly. The newscasts have been building up for days about the impending traffic nightmares, and following the tonnage count of donations to food banks, to “give families a holiday dinner”. Also featured: Tips for Pet Safety on Thanksgiving! A Possible Storm Will Make Traffic Even Worse! The President Pardoned A Turkey! Football Games! And non-stop reminders in advance of the next scheduled and over-commercialized holiday: Black Friday Sales!
Thanksgiving is not a religious holiday, or a holiday based on the lunar cycle, but an arbitrary day on the calendar, left over from a story handed down and manipulated through generations from a group of people who were grateful to still be alive after a long period of hardship. The irony seems to be that they held this celebratory meal before the true grip of winter had set in, and the real hardships were just around the corner. I believe it was a celebration of safe arrival and a successful harvest, that the work of harvest and food storage and winter prep was complete, maybe the weather was favorable that week, and there was a lull in the activity. So they threw together a community potluck, invited the entire village, as well as a few Indians that happened to be nearby, and they had a meal. They said a prayer of thanks before eating, as I am sure they did before every meal. It just happened to be a Thursday. So now, on the fourth day of a subset of days we call a week, said fourth day being called Thursday, said day in question falling in the third week in the eleventh month that we call November, in a bigger set of days that we call a year, we have an official holiday we named “Thanksgiving”. Those first Thanksgiving participants were no less thankful for their gifts on Friday, or the next day. What they did have that day, and every day that came before and after, was hope, and faith.
Imagine for a moment that some circumstance in your life compelled you to pack up your belongings, build a boat, and set out for an unknown land to create a new life. That you were able to persuade a few people to come with you, with no guarantees that it would all turn out okay. That once you arrived, you had to locate a suitable place to start your new life, then gather the necessary materials to build shelters. Then you had to find some food. You had to meet the new neighbors, and convince them you meant no harm, and on a side note, please don’t be offended when you cut down the trees in their area, hunted the same game they had been planning to hunt, foraged for the same edibles that they had been waiting all season to harvest themselves. Without speaking the same language, of course. No wonder they were thankful! Just to survive a day, sleep safely through the night, and wake up the next morning was enough. A table covered with gathered bounty, surrounded by the survivors and their tolerant new neighbors would have seemed a glorious extravagance. What they did have, in great abundance, was hope and faith. Now layer that story on top of today’s headlines, and think about the refugees around the world, who have taken that same leap of faith, who have set out under duress for places unknown with just what they can carry, and are trying to build a new life where they can be safe. How thankful they must be, just to wake up in the morning.
When I arrived home last night, I had worked myself into a state of melancholy, thinking about all of these things. Then I walked into the kitchen, with groceries in hand, and my husband was standing at the counter with his back to me, preparing dinner. Suddenly, I felt a physical wave of feeling: it was gratitude. It was small and gentle, and would have been easy to miss, but I felt it. I was happy to see he was making dinner, and I could have locked on to the fact that I was late, and had not been there to help. But what hit me was the warm feeling that he exists, and that he was present in my universe. I get that same feeling when I look in on my sleeping child, sprawled and tangled in his blankets, and wonder when his arms got so long and his feet got so big. That physical feeling of gratitude is what I need to get better at recognizing and celebrating, amidst the chaos of daily living.
So, what is the bridge that can help deliver us from the feeling of guilt to the feeling of gratitude? The answer: Hope, faith, and a commitment to doing what we can for others, not just on holidays, but every day. One person cannot save the world, and it takes work to remind yourself of that. What we can do is continue to vote, to pray, to properly consolidate our recycling, and to donate to the food bank, all year. Because people without means will still need breakfast tomorrow, and lunch next Wednesday. We can give of our time and resources when we can, throughout the year. We can call the people we care about today, because it is Thanksgiving, but we should also call them next week, and next month, and again after that.
When I woke up this morning, I blinked and was grateful for the fact that when the amount of daylight was enough, and my body had finished its last cycle of rest after a busy night of dreaming, I was alive and had been given the gift of waking to see another day. I resolved that my strategy for combating the guilt and training myself to actually feel gratitude will be this: I will be thankful for the small things, things that are universal and that I know others can share, regardless of their station in life or place on the planet. Things such as the fact that the sun and moon rise every day, that our bodies know better than we do what is essential to staying alive, and that we breathe and sleep involuntarily. That there is life everywhere, and our planet continues to try to heal itself, despite what we do to it. That birds fly, dogs wag their tails, that the oceans and clouds continue to swirl and mix in concert to keep our planet alive, all without our intervention. For those of us that have more than that, we can and should give thanks for good health, safety, shelter, love and companionship, times of plenty and choices. None of those can be taken for granted, and can be taken from us any minute of every day. We need to armor ourselves with hope and faith, so that we have the strength to move through life without fear of loss, while offering a hand to those in need. If everyone committed to that, the world would be a better place, and there would be less to feel guilty about. My prayers of thanks today will include being grateful for what I have today, hope that others will have something to be grateful for, faith that the world will sort itself out, and for the strength to do my part to help. Today, tomorrow, and the days after that.
Happy Thanksgiving.
No Comments