Last year, I wrote about the one ‘problem’ I have with the holidays, namely that almost immediately after giving thanks for what we are already lucky enough to have, we flock to shopping centers and push and shove and possibly injure our way through others to get the latest technical innovation or newest bauble.
This devalues the actual good aspect of this holiday, which you might as well call ‘The American Day of Personal Reflection,’ because those same technical wonders and fresh distractions keep us from focusing and thinking about ourselves and not in terms of wants or what we don’t have, but rather what we already do.
It seems simple enough but is hard to accomplish. There are the almost standard tropes of writing an article like this, lines like how you are most likely not homeless while you are reading this and have never had to skip a meal unless you were dieting (and if you are reading this while in those situations, I wish for better days ahead for you), but there are always the smaller things, the reasons to be grateful you may not even fully realize until they are not there.
In that case be glad for those past memories, for all of us in almost every situation no matter how dire, those past instances where one night seemed to last forever and a day, things and people were new and inviting, the air was stimulating and the time just tasted full of life and vigor.
Point it is that this time coming up should be one where we first focus on what we as individuals have internally that is good, looking back also on the more positive aspects of the past and then in the coming months, not just December through Christmas and New Year’s Day, push that goodwill, love, and positivity outwards into the world around us, bringing others into our spheres of light and joy and changing the Earth besides.
Today modernly there is too much ill will out there already, too many opposing forces, too many things and events that have shaken the nation for which this holiday of Thanksgiving calls its homeland. Healing those wounds begins at home and in our hearts, and the next year coming around the corner soon could be one for the ages….Happy Thanksgiving.
