Happy Thanksgiving
I'm grateful for you turkeys.
Happy Thanksgiving, readers — I am so grateful for your subscriptions and your support. If you subscribe, you probably care about other human beings, and I am grateful for that, too.
This Thanksgiving I’m in Hong Kong, far away from family and friends, and I’m sad to be missing one of my favorite holidays. I’m also thinking about the nature of giving thanks, and what it means that Americans dedicate a holiday to it every year. For me, gratitude exists in balance with suffering: That is, without the experience or at least knowledge of suffering, there is no gratitude; gratitude grows greater, or at least becomes more front-of-mind, when one has suffered or is in proximity to suffering. We are more grateful for our health when we have been ill. We are more grateful for our friends when we have been lonely. This year, I am missing the people who are far away, and I am feeling grateful for them in equal proportion — how lucky, to have people you love enough to miss deeply. How lucky, to have built multiple beautiful lives, and to want the impossibility of living all of them at once.
And I am feeling grateful, perhaps perversely, for the points of friction in my life: the things that are hard and exhausting; the things that I am working toward and not yet achieving (and might never achieve); the setbacks that have clarified where I want to be, and what I want to leave behind.
If you’re a reader of this newsletter, you also probably follow American politics, and maybe you’re feeling disappointed, angry, or fearful right now. Odd as it sounds, I am grateful so many of us are feeling this way (even if I am not grateful for the outcome of the presidential election). If we’re sad or afraid or mad, we are invested; it means we care about our country, our collective futures, other people. Inertia and apathy may be less emotionally crushing, but they are also how we lose what makes us human, and how we lose what makes us good.
I am grateful for all of your goodness and for your investment in lives beyond your own. Whether you’re American or not, I hope you take a moment today to consider not just what you’re thankful for or lucky for, but what spurs gratitude — and where, in moments of darkness, you can find the cracks where the light comes in.
xx Jill
p.s. Tell me in the comments: How are you thinking about thankfulness and gratitude this year? What are you feeling thankful for? Where are you finding gratitude in the tough stuff?
Thanks for this today, Jill. I am thankful for partial physical mobility, as I recover from 2 ankle surgeries and spine fusion over past 2 years. You're right - it's the hard stuff that reminds us of things we take for granted, like walking and driving. I am also grateful for you, Jill. You bring context and perspective in trying times. And I'm grateful for your readers and subscribers. Let's stay engaged and stand up for what's good.
I am grateful to live in an area with many small farms and enough of them who sell directly to us that I do not need a lot of commercial food products. I stock my freezer with beef, pork, and poultry from several farms. I buy vegetables and fruits in season and freeze the ones that can be frozen. Others can be canned. These are some of the lights that pierce the darkness with their kind attitudes.