Piecing Together a Bit of Gratitude for Thanksgiving
Accepting the hard with the good and saying "thank you."
This Thanksgiving may be a time to work through tightly held illusions. We all have them—illusions. Illusions are images in our heads of how we think a day, an event, a person, a gathering will look. Illusions are like false beliefs—they are not true. It’s not going to happen. Thanksgiving illusions are the recognition that your day is just not going to be the day you hoped for or wanted.
Maybe, it starts with all the questions? “Where will you be this Thanksgiving?” or “Who will you be enjoying Thanksgiving with this year?” These questions, and lots more similar to them, can trigger an automatic response of a table full of food and family; friends and neighbors. Or it can trigger the uncomfortable feeling of being alone. Then, there’s the quick questions “How was your Thanksgiving?” What if you dared to say: “Lonely.” “Disappointing.” Or, “Dismal.”
What if your special day is going to be, well, not so special after all?
We won’t be sitting by a fire or at a long table set for the many, this Thanksgiving. We will be in a restaurant. It just seemed easier this year. We won’t be surrounded by a single grandchild or son or daughter in law this Thanksgiving. It’s a long story. We are spread out; this is not the year on the cycle to host Thanksgiving; We live in three countries and three states. It is just not going to “happen” this year.
None of our rituals, which served us in former years will be used this year—no saying the “one thing” you are most grateful for; no placing a corn kernel in a bowl and passing it with a sentence or two of gratitude; no lighting of candles. It’s going to be different. And maybe, it’s going to be hard. (To piece together another Substack entry I made recently, this is a year to just say, “Let.”)
Yesterday, Gwen and I counted on two hands, the number of close friends and relatives that are facing health crises—the kind of crisis that requires trips to the ER, hospitalization and tests results that have still not come back with a proper diagnosis. Tell me, how does Thanksgiving really work when you’re waiting on tests results? It’s going to be hard. I’m sorry, if this is “too close to home” for you. I really am.
Seems like we are getting use to hard Thanksgivings too: the COVID years of hard Thanksgivings; the one where no one could mention politics—(maybe, like us, you still can’t…) Holidays are always hard and gruesome, when it’s the first one that your special person is missing by their passing this past year? Sometimes, all you can think of is ‘how can we get by and skip this year’s festivities?’
And then, there is our world…how does one do Thanksgiving when babies in Gaza, in the ICU, in a bombed out hospital, are in route to Egypt? Or what if you’re sister is a hostage or in Kiev? It goes on.
Some perspective might help. Perspective is when we rise above the circumstances to see a bigger picture. It can help to do this, seriously!
First, being grateful is not dependent upon our circumstances being “good.” Thanksgiving is not based on circumstances. Gratitude is a condition of the heart. It is a conscious choice to be grateful, just as it is a choice to be bitter or cynical.
I try to remember the ten lepers who were healed by Jesus and how only one of the healed lepers turned back to say, thank you. That act singled him out to be healed, not only physically but spiritually. I’d like to be that one leper who turned back and said, “thank you.”
Second, it may not help to say, “It could be worse.” This is speculation and comparing ourselves to see who might be in a harder situation. Gratitude is not comparing or measuring. Gratitude is about humility; bowing low and piecing your lips with your heart to just utter a simple acknowledgement that strings two mono-syllable words together: “Thank” and “You.”
Third, given all the research we now know about how gratitude does make a marked difference in our brain and heart, it’s just a very good posture to maintain—not just for one day of the year but for many, if not all—the best we can. (Click or Scroll around on my Substack and read or re-read the post on the Mood Elevator.)
I always find it helpful to make an acrostic of a word, I’m trying to understand and then, to put a word beside each letter of that one word to help me flesh it out a bit more. That one words is like a synonym that fleshes out, a bit more, the big word you’re focusing on. Like this:
T-
H-
A-
N-
K-
S-
What if you tried this? Make the acrostic on a blank sheet of paper or card and put a few words together than might help you articulate the good and the hard—because the go together so often, don’t they? Like this: “ T-hankful for my illness because through my being sick, I’ve realized who my friends really are.” And so, on.
Fourth, take a look at the Scrabble picture at the top of this post. Sometimes, gratitude is something you piece together to make it work when it doesn’t feel like working. You make the “best” of “it”…and you define the ‘best’ and the ‘it.’ Step by step. Word by word and Scrabble piece by piece till you can find the two mono-syllables in your heart to just say and then mean.