My family is not committed to any particular organized religion. The one ritual that we do practice religiously is taking turns around the Thanksgiving table to express what it is that each of us are grateful for. Although I can't vouch for the others, I don't prepare what I am going to say. I have noticed that the things that I am grateful for have changed over the years. I am not as engaged as I once was in the world in a way that I am concerned about the outcome of events. Of course if I get sick and especially if a loved one gets sick, I hope and pray for their return to health. And I celebrate the successes and empathize with the failures of these loved ones. But for myself, my life has stabilized more and more over the years and the things that I am grateful for have less to do with how things turn out as they have to do simply with my ability to observe and remember events as they are unfolding. These abilities that I have gratitude for are not things that special luck or talents or opportunities have brought me beyond the immensely lucky opportunity to be born. They are abilities that I share with every living being.
I am grateful for life itself. What a remarkably wonderful thing life is. I am able to experience things. I do this at every moment. I can see. I can hear. I can feel fresh air on my skin. I can eat and drink and taste whatever it is that I am eating and drinking. Like everyone else, I have intentions; there are things that I want to do. But as I grow older, the things that I want to do are almost exclusively things that I am able to do, simply by intending them. I am not invested in a set of desires that are in competition with other people's sets of desires. If I want to go for a walk, miraculously, all the muscles that I need to constrict and relax in order for me to go for that walk automatically begin to constrict and relax the moment that I have that intention and they constrict and relax in precisely the sequence and timing that allows me not only to walk but to walk in the specific direction that I intend to walk in. That is wondrous. It is no less wondrous because I share that ability with every ambulatory creature on this planet. I can instantaneosly direct my body in the direction that I want to direct it and to do precisely what it is that I want it to do. And these activities are very precise : like typing this essay, or getting a glass of water or tying my shoes, activities that require remarkably precise cascades of firing neurons and contracting and expanding molecules within my musculature.
I am grateful for the sun, not as an object, but as an experience. I observe the light and experience the warmth that it brings every day. I feel that on my body. I observe how all my fellow creatures react to the arrival of light every day. I see the energy that it produces. The same with water. I walk the same trail at least a few days every week, and I live in an area that has a rainy season. Prior to that season, right now for instance, most of the plants along that trail are parched. They wait with eager anticipation for the arrival of the rains and when the rains do arrive they swell and grow and turn radiant colors in their happiness. This is a glory to behold and I am able to observe that any time I want, simply by directing my feet in that direction.
I can think. You may not agree with the way that I think, which is fine; and you will never know all the ways in which I think as I will never know all the ways in which you think; which is also fine. But I can still think, and I can think about the things that I want to think about, simply by focussing on whatever it is that I want to focus on. Again, this ability is something that I share with all my fellow humans, and with, I believe, a lot, lot more creatures that are generally not thought of as 'thinking.' And again, it is no less glorious, no less wondrous, that I am able to do that because I share that ability with everyone else. I may live in a nominally capitalist, competitive economy and I may live in a society that shares many beliefs about the inherently competitive nature of biology, but the things that I am grateful for are not things that I am in competition with you about. And it does not diminish, one iota, the miraculous nature of these abilities because they are shared by countless living creatures.
Life itself is truly wondrous and miraculous. If I wish for anything, I wish for more of my fellow creatures to stop wishing (at least once in a while) and really take stock of these wonderful abilities that we are each already able to do and experience. A lot more happiness, a lot more mutual respect, a lot more peace and joy would be generated if we did. Belated Happy Thanksgiving!
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I find it rather telling that in the six years following this post arriving on the scene that no one has commented on the subject of thankfulness. This seems to be a serious defect within what passes for a culture these days. To give thanks is an expression that implies someone to whom thanks is due. This is something that I do not like about my American experience, because the notion of rugged individualism writes out of the picture anyone to whom we owe any shred of thankfulness. I did this, I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps, I am the captain of my fate, if it is to be it's up to me, all very worthy sounding sentiments each of which denies any external causation for the favorable circumstances we experience in life that are completely outside our control. I am of a particular faith orientation and am not ashamed to thank God for all the good gifts I have received in life.
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