It’s Thanksgiving here in the United States, which means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
To some, it means a return to beloved traditions; for others it carries troubling undercurrents of colonization; for others it means a day full of gratitude and glad reflection; for others, it’s a reminder of all the things we HAD and then lost.
When I was a little kid in Sunday school at church, the right answer to just about every question was “Jesus.” Now, as an adult, I feel like the answer to just about every question is “gratitude.”
As in: Are you upset? Remember what you’re grateful for. Are you hurting? Remember that there are still things you’re grateful for. Are you angry? Remember how much you have to be grateful for. Not sure how to respond to situation X, Y, or Z? Gratitude!
Not to sound cynical, of course. I DO have a lot to be grateful for. I’m an incredibly privileged, college-educated white person with a roof over my head and plenty of food on the table. (And I feel guilty as hell about it.)
But that doesn’t mean I haven’t LOST anything in 2020. Because I have. We ALL have, to some degree or another. And it hurts.
I feel like, as an adult in the 21st century, I need to be figuratively dining on this perpetual and perfectly proportioned banquet of intentional joy, acceptable grief, and purposeful gratitude. Always back to gratitude.
They make it sound so easy, don’t they? “Just root back into gratitude.” What could be more simple? But… gratitude as a state of being, empty of all cynicism, guilt, pain, jealousy, greed, righteous anger, bitterness, etc., is freakin’ HARD.
And — here’s my confession, my sin for the new age — I don’t always necessarily WANT to be in that state. 👀
…I realize this doesn’t feel like a very Thanksgiving-y post. But Thanksgiving, as I mentioned earlier, is a really loaded holiday for me. It would be so easy, so blissful, to sink into a state of complete and utter gratitude, where all we have is just enough. Where anger and fear and doubt and guilt and pain and grief are mere wrinkles, smoothed over by a warm iron of gratitude.
But I think I have a lot of work to go before I get there.
Words & warmth,
Sarah