Thanksgiving Has Been Extended Hey Good News, Right?
The gratitude part, anyway. Not the gravy.
I was wondering where our nice tablecloths were last Thursday so we could have the big meal but when I saw the table it was covered in white butcher paper and there were markers and crayons available.
“We’re going to write down what we’re thankful for,” said Jill, my wife and a Thoughtful Person. “Or draw pictures.”
It can be hard to phrase the exact thing you want to say in the way you want to say it when you go around the table. So the idea here is you write or draw as it strikes you and the conversation was more on the topic of Most Uncomfortable Moments in Family History*, which lent itself better to conversation because you can physically cringe in front of loved ones and laugh together.
The butcher paper is still on the table today because it’s fun and there is so much to be grateful for. Today isn’t Cyber Monday. That’s just corporations shaking you down for money. Today is still Thanksgiving, though we are out of green bean casserole.
I’ve been examining my whole relationship with the idea of gratitude lately because it’s an easy thing to neglect during these days of COVID and the various societal perils that go with it. “People are dying and the government isn’t doing anything about it,” one might say, “What’s there to be thankful for?”
And yeah, point taken, but I choose to see that question as less exclamatory and more calmly interrogative. I think it’s important to think about the (if I may say this non-religiously) blessings that are around us. And because I’m not religious, I don’t mean thanking God or even the universe. It’s not sending the gratitude out, it’s about keeping it hovering around you like a semi-translucent pink orb. Or not. Point is, you can keep your gratitude in your head if you want. That’s fine. Don’t look up “pink orb” through Google or Google Image Search, by the way. Takes you to a weird part of town.
Look, forget the pink orb.
My gratitude focus lately has been on all the things I would have gone ape about earlier in life if I knew my future contained them but accept as routine now. Things that I could have never imagined would be my life someday but, now that someday is here, I sometimes fail to recognize.
I had a phone call with my literary agent about which book idea I should concentrate on. It’s a matter of calibrating clarity of idea, my enthusiasm for the idea, and what can sell. This was just a routine Wednesday phone call, after which I walked the dogs. But when I was young, I couldn’t imagine reaching a point in life where that was a thing that could happen. An agent? Books?! I took some moments to feel what it meant to have that call. It’s instructive. The joys are often hiding in plain sight.
Walking those dogs with my wife. I found these three someones who love me and want to be with me. Jill in different ways than the dog, I hope that’s obvious. So yes, a simple walk, but it’s worth it to take a moment and recognize what’s happening because maybe the routine is, in fact, extraordinary.
I can think of a song I haven’t heard in a while and bring it up on my phone, bluetooth it over to a good speaker, and it’s playing and I’m having that experience right now. Yes, thankful for iPhones and Spotify. Plenty of mitigating factors with Apple and Spotify to think about but in under ten seconds I’m hearing my choice from an enormous library. And wow. Here’s the song:
What about you? What’s become a common, even mundane thing in your life that you could be more consciously grateful for? Take a moment - and you have a moment - to be thankful for it.
In times of desperation, hope is an act of resistance. And it can become a revolution.
As the tweet says, well worth your six minutes. It’s clear and extremely hopeful language. It’s about the vaccines that are coming and what it has taken to get them here. It’s not all roses and ice cream, mind you, but it’s about what we need to do and why we need to keep fighting. Not against each other but side by side.
You will feel better.
When I talked about taking a moment to be grateful, I almost said to meditate on that. But I didn’t want it to get mucked up in preconceptions of the word “meditate.”
The type of meditation that works for me is MBSR, or mindfulness-based stress reduction. It’s not a spiritual or religious thing in my case. It’s about taking some time to get my brain to stop worrying about the future or the past and just be where I am now. Like dogs can do effortlessly.
Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is an eight-week evidence-based program that offers secular, intensive mindfulness training to assist people with stress, anxiety, depression and pain. Developed at the University of MassachusettsMedical Center in the 1970s by Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn, MBSR uses a combination of mindfulness meditation, body awareness, yoga and exploration of patterns of behavior, thinking, feeling and action. Mindfulness can be understood as the non-judgmental acceptance and investigation of present experience, including body sensations, internal mental states, thoughts, emotions, impulses and memories, in order to reduce suffering or distress and to increase well-being. Mindfulness meditation is a method by which attention skills are cultivated, emotional regulation is developed, as well as rumination and worry are significantly reduced
You can read more about it here.
There are probably some classes on it in your area or online or something. Look it up! I won’t try to sell you on it. I only want to sell you my book.
My younger self would be AMAZED that I found a career where I have a regular work schedule, weekends off, paid holidays, and don't have to put in a request to ever get more than one day off in a row.
I've always enjoyed how useful my sense of humor is, particularly as a coping mechanism. With a brand new cancer diagnosis it's jumped from useful to mandatory. I know so many people who would fall to pieces. Plenty of my medical team members have been concerned that I haven't been angry. Then they realize I enjoy gallows and twisted comedy just like they do. It will be one of the most important tools I have.