Thanksgiving 2020 is upon us, and there have been many, many words written about what an unusual year this is and how many things have gone unexpectedly wrong.
I thought it would be good to sit and think and write about how to brighten the holidays a bit by adopting the right perspective.
Today is the celebration of US Thanksgiving. The event calls back to the celebration of the first harvest by the Pilgrims in 1621. According to sources, the event was attended by Native Americans.
Now, the religious or spiritual side of the holiday has, in general, not been in question. There are certainly enough events of charity around the time that you can imagine that the holiday is a Good Thing (tm).
However, from the perspective of Native Americans, things didn't work out great. This would not be a day marked in the calendar for celebration. There are multiple perspectives on the holiday, and there are many valid personal meanings one can overlay over it.
Now, as far as harvest feasts go, Thanksgiving is relatively new. If you want to dig back, you can search around for pretty much any 'culture harvest feast', and find plenty of resources on how humans have been celebrating since, well, harvesting was around.
But there's more to this than learning history or eating yourself silly, of course.
My preference has always been to think of Thanksgiving as a time of unbridled gratitude.
What things you have to be grateful for are deeply, fundamentally personal. 'Family' is a common one, but if you were raised in an abusive one, you're unlikely to gravitate towards that.
The pandemic this year has given me plenty to be grateful for. My family and I are healthy, and the adults are still employed. For today, that's enough - it's so much better than the alternative, and there are many people who have not been as fortunate.
One of the things that I do like a lot about Thanksgiving is about how simple the things are that we can focus on. If we have enough to eat, a place to gather and others in our lives to share with, that's more than enough to build a holiday around.
I'd like to share a bit from Letter 15. On Brawns and Brains from the moral letters to Lucilius by Seneca.
... Here is the proverb; it is an excellent one: "The fool's life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future." ... for we are plunged by our blind desires into ventures which will harm us, but certainly will never satisfy us; for if we could be satisfied with anything, we should have been satisfied long ago; nor do we reflect how pleasant it is to demand nothing, how noble it is to be contented and not to be dependent upon Fortune. ... Therefore continually remind yourself, Lucilius, how many ambitions you have attained. When you see many ahead of you, think how many are behind! If you would thank the gods, and be grateful for your past life, you should contemplate how many men you have outstripped. But what have you to do with the others? You have outstripped yourself.
Lots to unpack here. I love that one of the counterpoints to gratitude is the fear of future failure, to depend on fortune rather than acknowledge happiness that is within our grasp.
And when looking for what to be grateful for, how easy it is to compare us to others, when we could do so much better by looking at our past selves.
When looking at our past selves, we can also fall into the trap of thinking that things were better in years past - this is nothing new. But the victories of our past selves are still ours today; how great would it be to learn to enjoy them without having to recreate them. Yes, I could run longer and faster in my younger years, but even today I can still remember how pleasurable that was, and it will never stop being true that I did.
We can practice gratitude every day, any day. For all the bad that may come, let that stand in contrast to the good to make it all the sweeter. Marcus Aurelius wrote, after all, Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man - yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.
Gratitude exercises are an excellent tonic for the spirit, and today of all days, I hope everyone gets the opportunity to have their fill.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Tags: meditation philosophy