In less than an hour, it will be Thanksgiving. 2022. What am I wondering this year? Something some may find odd: I am wondering if people are actually thankful on Thanksgiving anymore ?
Thankful. Grateful. Blessed. These words are exceedingly overused in our everyday vernacular. They are almost too casually tossed out here and there, like verbal popcorn. I question if people really are any of those things sometimes.
We live in a beautiful, yet often cruel and hateful world. Just look at social media. It is a modern way to keep us connected, yet it’s a bully pulpit for so many to be so hateful. I know my critics will scoff at that idea, since everything they project on me, they actually do.
Ironic, isn’t it? The pious perfectionists of social media are the ones who do the most damage. They have narrow comfort levels and in some cases, narrow knowledge bases, which of course leads to their narrow opinions, narrow world view.
These people have made a difficult couple of years for all of us, more difficult. Which brings me to why I am thankful. I am thankful I am not those people. I am thankful those people are not my people in all of their judgmental glory.
Life is not some perfectly staged silent tableaux. Life is messy and real and in technicolor. We need to give ourselves permission to live our lives out loud. Every day will not ever be perfect, nor should it be. It’s time for all of us to stop the apology tour for the skewed perspectives of others. Be thankful for who we are as human beings. Be thankful for those who see us.
That is not to say that we all couldn’t stand to be a little more kind at times. Sure we all could, but that doesn’t mean we are supposed to roll over and have doormat stamped on our foreheads.
I am thankful and grateful. For my life. For my friends and family.
Thanksgiving marks the start of a season where so many feel so alone. Even if they aren’t. In the season of giving, sometimes just a simple checking in can help some people.
2022 has been a crazy year I think. And very hard and full of loss for some, change for others, and maybe a bit of both for a lot of us. Sadness and gladness, bittersweet, hard, eventful, exhausting.
I think all of us can also say we are happy to have survived La Vida COVID. So many did not. And COVID has definitely taught us not to take a lot of the everyday for granted.
I will never pretend to have all of the answers in life, or even some answers because I always have questions.
Anyway, as it is after midnight, it is officially Thanksgiving.
Gobble, gobble.
Happy Thanksgiving.