If you are like most Americans, you will gather around an
over-loaded table of food tomorrow, for the Thanksgiving Day obligatory
eat-fest. If you are fortunate, someone
will suggest that you all give short speeches about What You Are Thankful For,
before you dig in.
It’s better than just digging in, of course. But let’s be honest – most of these
ThankFests are very superficial. I’m thankful for my family. Or my friends. Whoever is in the room with me and will
remember if I DON’T go down that timeworn road.
I’m thankful for my health. Or my obliviousness, when spoken by people
who don’t get tests and checkups from a reputable doctor regularly. My mother-in-law thanked god for her good
health every year, including the Thanksgiving just before she was diagnosed
with the colon cancer that she could have
completely averted if she hadn’t insisted that having an easy, simple
colonoscopy was “claiming” cancer. So
let’s say that you either have or imagine that you have some level of good
health. Most of us grab that old
chestnut and quit. End of introspection
until next year.
What most of us really are thankful for is our income, and
our place and prestige in the world. Who
has the courage to say that they aren’t really thankful for their economic good
fortune, both because it is usually considered unseemly bragging to admit you
are doing quite a bit better than just Middle Middle Class, and because we
really do believe that our success is 100% attributable to our own cleverness,
thank you very much? We focus so much of
our precious life energy in jockeying for position, either in an organization
or directly in the marketplace. If we
had what we define as a Good Year, because we got money, power and prestige
enough to please us, we aren’t going to be honest and say so. And if we fell short by society’s estimation,
which becomes our estimation at a deep level, then we have yet another reason
to put on a fake Happy Face and utter the usual platitude or make a joke of the
whole Thankfulness thing.
So, go ahead and get through the social amenities as best
you can. Just don’t forget that
gratitude – real gratitude – has been clinically shown to move mountains. It shields you from flu bugs, cleans out your
arteries, lowers your blood sugar and gives you more years of genuine good
health, if you practice it regularly. The
only Gotcha is that it has to be real gratitude. Genuine gratitude differs from the posturing
and positioning around the groaning table in that it’s foundation is surrender
to the reality that whatever sadness comes to you isn’t 100% caused by your DNA
and blatant stupidity. Some of your
sadness is better explained as bad luck, a spiritual process like karma
involving thousands of generations, or other processes that you can’t control
and don’t need to waste your time trying to be angry about. Real gratitude also comes from a place where
you know that your Good Times are never 100% about you. They are a gift from the universe, from the
luck of the cosmic bouncing dice or from processes that you can’t game and can’t
predict. A stranger or a new
acquaintance gives you exactly what you need, a gift that fills you with awe,
pleasant shock and, if you’re prepared, with genuine gratitude. For that moment, you are standing in a
spotlight of love, joy and ease, that you didn’t create and can’t control.
When I’m not feeling it, it’s because I am tunnel-visioned
on what’s wrong with my world. Which, at
various times in my life, has encompassed every single realm of
generally-accepted Life. Visualize me at
a total loss, finally coming up with “I am grateful that I don’t have cancer…
that I don’t have diabetes….. that I don’t have a broken leg; I can walk… that
I don’t have….” Imagine me finally
realize that I was working as a college prof of human anatomy and had a mental
list of about 5,000 health problems I didn’t have (making the few I DID have
seem pretty paltry), and laughing at myself. At
which point, real gratitude had a chance.
If you are stuck with unaware family or friends on The Day,
find a way to sneak off with your journal, meditate and let something real
happen for you. [Writing gets you out of
your head; it’s magical.] Perhaps you
can Skype or email someone who will understand.
If not, you will have created pockets of time and space in which you can
feel and express that which you can’t express publicly.
What a wondrous thing is gratitude. May it move mountains for you this
Thanksgiving weekend, and the rest of the holiday month of December.
