Thanksgiving’s Silver Lining: Gratitude for What Is. And What Isn’t.
We are meant to give thanks for what life has given us. In these times - full of suffering and uncertainty - how do we even begin to articulate what we are thankful for?
When you greet a neighbor or friend (socially distanced or virtually) and you’re asked, “How are you?”… Do you hesitate like I do? “Hanging in,” is my go-to, accompanying a sigh (or a half-hearted creepy wink above my mask). My elderly neighbor who I saw in the lobby yesterday while carrying her bag of groceries, sighed too, looked at me frankly and replied: “I don’t even know how to answer that question anymore.”
The holding it together façade we project on the outside – running errands or posting pictures of our wines, dogs, cats, kids, and gardens - is naturally very different than the turmoil we feel on the inside.
I’m aware that my life and experience on social media telegraphs that all is thrumming along just fine. One could even surmise that the pandemic hasn’t affected me, my husband, my living, my dreams, and plans for the future. And yet. Both things are true.
All things are. The mercurial kaleidoscope of stress, emotions, pleasure and grief we experience minute to minute – in any present moment are authentic, vulnerable, and a calling out for connection. Even in a social media snapshot.
Maybe social media and the images we put out there, zoom screenshots included, are a much needed salve right now. They are the equivalent of a (mask-free) breath inhale and exhale in the form of a thumbnail.
Perhaps it helps give us a hope shot in the arm – to receive validation that the tiny little wins – cooking a meal, having the attention span to complete a book or ensure that our plants survive - all mean something right now, and that others get it too.
Perhaps it helps us identify and embrace the good moments, rather than envisioning the worst; the dystopian potential calamities that are possible but that we have zero control over. We have the innate human need to harness and communicate the little sparks of joy in our present - gratitude and survival in snapshots - no matter how fleeting.
For me, it helps to ask the following:
1- When you wake in the morning, what is the comfort you go to? Is it snoozing your alarm because you get another half hour before that call, and don’t have to commute? Is it following the scent of the coffee brewing? Is it your dog who is staring at you (like mine) and has been waiting for two hours for you to open your eyes (like mine) and meet her adoring stare (definitely mine)?
2- Do you see your kids’ live reactions, despite the zoom fails and remote learning, when they turn to you with their raw feelings? In the alternative “normal” version, would they be holding it in or running off with friends on their skateboards and not talking to you?
3- Have you unconsciously disconnected from the people that you’ve outgrown or don’t nourish you in the now tiny footprint of your life? Do you feel slightly guilty but also liberated, because the herculean effort it requires to maintain those friendships could be a signal that you’ve always stretched yourself to thin?
4- Like me, do you cherish and miss your aging parents and siblings, and despite all the familial strife, or grace and closure you’ve wizened to regarding your upbringing, realize that politics, religion, ways of life and the path you chose and brought to fruition in your adult life that clashes with the expectations of you when you were young - don't frickin matter anymore? Do you just want to kiss and squeeze them close, and declare that this is the crux of love and life and who cares about the rest?
5- Have your big dreams to “make it big” changed? Have you reflected on what that actually means – whether it’s to write that opus, that movie, get that promotion or pay check - and question the soul reason you actually strove to achieve that in the first place?
There’s a song (“We Used to be Giants”) which I play on repeat on my daily jog-walks (aka “wogs”) that is worth quoting here:
We used to be giants
When did we stop?…
The hope and the hurt
Has lived inside of me
But there's gold in the dirt
I never took the time to see
But I knew of its worth.
Sending peace, thanks and gratitude to all of you this (bizarre) thanksgiving.