This Thursday in the U.S. is our Thanksgiving holiday. Generally, it’s the time of year when friends and families gather together to eat a massive amount of turkey, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie and then watch American football.
But it’s also the time of year when you’re supposed to reflect on your blessings and give thanks. I’m not saying that every person does that, especially if they have to deal with a difficult mother-in-law across the table. But the spirit of the holiday is to appreciate your friends, family, and neighbors and reflect on how fortunate you are.
In the U.S. we just had an election for the office of President (you may have caught some mention of it, even if you live high in the mountains of Bhutan). It was a bitter, deeply divisive campaign season that pushed people apart instead of uniting them. The outcome of the election and my personal opinion on the person who is to represent my country to the world really isn’t as important as the fact that the United States of America doesn’t seem so united now. And may not for the next fours years, or even beyond. We seemed to have broken open a fracture that may never fully heal – just sitting under the surface waiting for the next push to refracture it.
But I believe in a world where all different kinds of people can co-exist and work to make humanity slightly better than our animalistic natures would have us live. Are we pack animals? Yes, of course we are. Our common ancestors needed to form groups to work together to find food, build shelter, and cooperate to raise the next generation. None of us would be here if our ancestors in the distant and not-so-distant past couldn’t work together.
And yet, these same groups formed warring tribes to fight with their neighbors, to take resources away from others for their own benefit, to enforce a code of conduct or religion on others who did not follow the same creeds. We’re still at the precipice of being, in the words of philosopher Hobbes, “nasty, brutish” creatures. And that makes me sad because I was hoping that we would have evolved past some of the tribalism we displayed so flagrantly a few weeks ago.
But instead of railing against other peoples’ hatred and bigotry, I am trying to find peace and acceptance that not everyone is able to think with generosity towards others. That not everyone has evolved to understand that the only way for real progress is to come to the realization that huddling into ever smaller groups and throwing rocks at other groups will never get our civilization to real prosperity.
So, in the spirit of thanksgiving, I am counting my personal blessings instead. I have my health in a much better place than it was two years ago when cancer was growing right in front of my eyes. I have a relationship with my husband that had undergone some significant issues but came out for the better on the other side. I have friends and family that understand my quirky nature and love me in spite of it. I have had the opportunity to travel and see far-away lands that I dreamt of seeing since I could flip the pages of the atlas. I have a job that provides the cash for me to pursue more travel in the months to come. I have a beautiful condo in downtown Austin where I can see the sunset every night. In short, I have a really wonderful life. And in times of trouble, knowing that it could all be taken from me in ways I can never imagine, I am forced to think about how lucky I am- right now. And remember that there are millions of people in the world, maybe even billions, that aren’t as fortunate as I am at this exact moment.