Black Thanksgiving

I have a love/hate relationship with the holiday season.
Mostly hate, if we're being honest.





Holidays bring out some of the best in people, sure, and that's great. I like the spirit.
But no amount of spirit and charity can cover the scent of the rotting carcass left by the lack of it for the rest of the year.

That's just me, though. If you enjoy them, more power to you.
Me, I'm going to try and ignore what it brings out in people.
Black Friday is a great example. Follow a day of being thankful for what you have with a day of worrying about what you don't have. Clever, if you think about it.
Clever and disgusting.

Maybe we should try a different take on Thanksgiving. The point seems to have been lost beneath layers of cliche Hallmark cards and animated turkeys.

Take a moment, and think of everything in your life that you are thankful to have. Everything. Be thorough.
Take a breath, and savor that feeling. The warmth you get from having friends, family, a home, whatever.

Now burn it all down.

In your mind, lose everything. Everything. Destroy all of it.
You have no home, no friends, no family. You are bankrupt, put out on the street.
You don't know that you'll eat today. You are alone in the cold, with absolutely nothing.

I don't want you to sympathize with people. You can learn a lot from this, so pay attention.
First, feel the pain. The sting of loss, the hurt.

Now admit to yourself the thing you miss most. It's okay, no one is listening.
The confession can be a bit jarring, I know. The thing that hurts most to lose? That defines you, in a way.

Now let's talk about what you are really thankful to have, with nothing.
You are alive. You are free, relatively speaking. Odds are good that no one is trying to kill you right now. You probably don't have a terminal illness.
There are fundamental elements to being alive that we take for granted, constantly. Maybe it's a function of our culture of "inalienable rights." But life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Those may be your right, but nothing in the nature of the world entitles you to have them.

From there, you can build. You have somewhere to sleep, clothes, friends, family.

Tell me, does it feel a little shallow when you hear someone say they're thankful for the new Nintendo DS they're getting, after you've done all this introspection?
It should, because it is.

Here's hoping somebody learns something.

- C

"You buy furniture.  You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life.  Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled.  Then the right set of dishes.  Then the perfect bed.  The drapes.  The rug.  Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you."  ~Chuck Palahniuk