On Gratitude

being thankful in a thankless time

Gratitude normally comes easy. You can sit down and tick off a list of things you’re thankful for in under a minute. Family, friends, life. But what happens when “normally” is non existent and you’re not seeing your family or friends and life is just harrowing?

We might have to reach back a little further this year for the gratitude. It might not be there, on the tip of your tongue, waiting to spill out as you go around the Thanksgiving table and say what you’re thankful for. It’s hard when that Thanksgiving table is smaller, more private, when the noise of the holiday is muted, when you’re missing the very people you want to engulf in gratitude.

Things are weird, and with that weirdness comes an upending of emotional state. Where in other years you might be flippant and think about how thankful you are for Pop-Tarts and twitter and the expanded Star Wars universe, there seems to be no room for flippancy now. You’re grateful just to be alive, to still have your job, a home, your health. And then you might feel guilty about having those things while so many people are jobless, homeless, sick, or dead. When 250,000 of your fellow citizens are lost to a virus, losses that were mostly preventable if the proper action was taken early on, it’s unseemly to joke how you are thankful for Apple TV’s Ted Lasso.

The merriment seems to be sucked out of the holidays just when we need it most. We need comfort, we need joy, we need to reach into the depths of our souls and find the things that once made us unconditionally happy. Gathering twenty of our closest relatives around a table laden with food is out this year, but that doesn’t mean we can’t call upon ourselves to make the most of Thanksgiving. I know you’ll be missing family members. You’ll miss your aunt’s blueberry pie and your sister’s raucous laughter and your uncle’s lengthy tirade against the Dallas Cowboys. You’ll miss a time when you weren’t hunkered down, when toilet paper was plentiful on the store shelves, when you didn’t have to wear a mask or be wary of your coworkers sudden coughing. You’ll spend time at the small Thanksgiving dinner you do have talking about what’s not there, talking about the state of the world and how the virus permeates our entire beings now. It’s exhausting and it’s depressing and it’s no way to spend a holiday, even a reimagined one.

So let’s give thanks. Let’s dig deep and find that gratitude. Let’s be flippant and let’s be serious and let’s think about the people, places, and things that truly mean the most to us. Put aside your grievances about “these times” and focus on what’s left after the anger and sadness that’s so pervasive today.

Feel that gratitude. Revel in it. Think about anything that makes you happy, that gives you even fleeting moments of joy. Be thankful for gorgeous fall sunsets and quiet mornings where it’s just you and a cup of hot coffee. Be thankful for the favorite tv show that you watch over and over again because it brings you comfort, for the snack you reach for when you need something crunchy, for the record you play that makes your heart sing. Feel gratefulness toward your favorite running shoes, your neighbor who gives you tomatoes from their garden, the weighted blanket you bought on a whim last year. That spot in the park where you gather your thoughts. Macaroni and cheese. The Spongebob Squarepants movie. Your great aunt who never forgets your birthday. Things small and large that complete your life, that brings you tiny bursts of joy that last you throughout a day, things that might make you forget for a moment that this year has been a complete and utter shitshow.

I know that being thankful and having gratitude feels like work this year. But we have to do that work. We have to find it, that gratefulness, that appreciation of things big and small. We have to, for what are we without it? We are already overflowing with sadness, anxiousness, a sense of despair. To spend a moment today taking stock of what we have instead of what we don’t have might alleviate that for a little while. And a little while is better than nothing, better than forgoing the thankful part of Thanksgiving at all.

So while we will all miss the big dinners and the joyous noise of company, while this Thanksgiving will have a different feel, we can still express gratitude for the things we still have. We might have a long winter ahead of us. Let us find joy right now. Let us appreciate the moment we are in. Let us give thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. I am grateful for you and I appreciate you.