I like Thanksgiving.
I like that it’s not called ThanksTaking.
Even though much of what we all do on Thanksgiving involves taking in quite a bit, it is hopefully done surrounded by the people in your life we most cherish – whether family biological or family elective, family nonetheless.
I like that there is a holiday – a federal, nationally recognized holiday, no less – whose sole purpose is to remind us to be thankful, to be grateful: for the people in our lives, for the things that we have, and for the things we don’t have, too.
And while I believe strongly that giving thanks to whatever higher power, god, or deity in which you might believe is something that should happen more than once a year, I also believe that that’s your business.
Thanksgiving can offer an opportunity to give thanks in a different way. It can be a day to give thanks to each other. Thanks for someone’s friendship, dedication, or commitment. Thanksgiving can be a day to give thanks for other’s patience with us, tolerance of our shortcomings, or willingness to reach out when no one else has. It can be a day that celebrates the unsung sacrifices others make so that we may flourish in our own lives.
It can also be a day of giving thanks for the never-ending opportunities we have to begin to make changes in our lives that take us toward being better versions of ourselves. Like Gabriel García Márquez wrote about one of his characters in the book Love in the time of Cholera, “He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the days their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over to give birth to themselves.”
So maybe Thanksgiving can also be a Birthday of sorts. That by engaging the mechanisms of humility and gratitude in a more integrated way, we can begin anew: both cultivating and discovering a life that doesn’t only pay homage to the merits of thankfulness on the 4th Thursday of each November, but does so throughout the year.
This year, put a few candles in the pumpkin pie and blow them out before you serve it. If anyone asks why, just tell them it’s our birthday.
From Left to Write 