Thanksgiving: Gratitude in an ungrateful time
How in the world are we supposed to give thanks for 2020?
And so we find ourselves this Thanksgiving.
Just reciting the litany of this year’s woes this year can be enough to turn the easiest holiday to enjoy into one that can devolve into bitterness.
Understandable. ‘Tis the season of our discontent with a world gone wrong.
Even Thanksgiving itself, in this year of reckoning with our very foundations about the past, is under new scrutiny.
Our plates are filled with doubt.
And yet, we are to give thanks?
Even as the pandemic rages? Even though we’ve been told not to gather today for Thanksgiving … even after the exhaustion of having gone through a divisive election in a year when our country at times seemed to be splitting apart in partisan fervor, racial unrest and economic uncertainty?
Yes. Even then.
Researchers have shown that giving thanks, adopting an attitude of gratitude, will replace anxiety and fear with numerous health benefits, including coping much better with stress, sleeping better, exhibiting higher levels of love and happiness, even lower blood pressure.
Better yet, gratitude can walk us back from the cliff of depression and hopelessness.
The problem is that when we most need these benefits is when everything seems to be going wrong, when statements like “be thankful even at a time like this” can come off as empty platitudes.
Well, think of this: With no major Thanksgiving gathering, that means far less of a chance for a brawl to break out over politics.
Or over the moral imperative of mask wearing.
But gratitude goes much deeper. It can be transformative in tough times, like this strange year, when I can choose to accept inevitable hard times and the valleys of loss as opportunities to practice being grateful.
When I do so, I stop being consumed by what others have and I don’t — or by circumstances and resentment – and allow my thinking to be turned inside out.
This is radical thankfulness — difficult to practice, but with a huge upside.
Gratitude as an attitude leaves me less consumed by possessions, more willing to help others, more physically active, more spiritually aware. It takes my eyes off the irretrievable past and leaves me in the unfolding reality of the present, looking forward, with hope.
Gratitude often requires action. Consider, for instance, keeping a gratitude journal.
The discipline of regularly writing down, with specificity, about seeing people and experiencing events in the prism of gratitude can have a huge impact on our inner peace and well-being.
Most people aren’t very good at gratitude. Surveys show that only about half of Americans express gratitude on a regular basis.
It’s no coincidence people showered with material blessings or gifted with physical beauty, superior talents, even great intelligence, often remain unsatisfied. Never rich enough. Never young enough. Never appreciated enough.
Grateful people often have suffered loss, or come up short on youthful dreams. They understand the world as it is, and has been, and remain humbled by our own character defects and failures.
There’s a spiritual principle at work: In everything, give thanks. When in doubt, give thanks.
It’s counter-intuitive. Much of life is difficult, but gratitude in the face of this says, “I’m making a choice to trust, rather than be fearful.”
Thankfulness says, “yes,” instead of “no,” invites me to share the promise with others, unleashes inner freedom, peace and the power to overcome the obsessive thoughts I have to grab more for myself.
It’s the opposite of self-reliance.
So today, in word and deed, I can make a decision to give thanks for family and friends, even if they’re with us only virtually this year.
For the scientists and medical researchers who have exceeded all expectations in moving forward with a coronavirus vaccine.
Gratitude for the blue-red dawn of sunrises and for the eternity and solitude of late November sunsets and for the soft fade of the twilight horizon.
For forgiveness. For grace. Why wouldn’t I be thankful?