I am recording these thoughts during the holiday season, when we are urged to think about what we’re thankful for. I have to admit, it’s a hard task this year.
Facebook prompted me with the photo that is in the header of this post, from 2017 at my parents’ farm, where my kids and most of their cousins grew up. In the photo you can see the pies I made and also a collage project that the entire extended family contributed to.
This year I made the pies for our somewhat less populated feast at my parents’ retirement bungalow. My dad, as he has been doing for the 60+ years he’s been a father, gave a speech about what he’s thankful for. I think it was hard for him, at 91, to see a world that seems so fractured. Unlike his own father, who handed his children off to a country full of optimism and growth, he doesn’t feel sure that his young adult grandchildren are entering a world of opportunity.
Today as I took my daily walk, I felt thankful for the warm sunshine, then felt guilty that I was enjoying the fruits of global climate change. And that led me to think about how my thankfulness this year presents itself in opposition.
I am thankful for today’s sunshine, but also for the cold and rainy days that our land needs.
I am thankful when someone I don’t know is nice to me, but also thankful when someone’s crankiness reminds me that their universe doesn’t revolve around mine.
I am thankful for the luck that has led me to a comfortable life with a loving family, but I am also thankful to know those for whom luck hasn’t always been so present. Their experiences remind me that my luck is luck, not fate.
I am thankful that I live in a place where my guests and I can speak freely on the Babblery about our experiences and opinions, but I’m also thankful for those in repressive countries who speak regardless of their own safety.
I am thankful for all the women I’ve spoken to in the last year, each one of whom is deeply committed to being her best self in a complex world.
I am thankful to live in relative peace in our country, but also thankful that the conflicts abroad remind me that war has a way of creating victims and perpetrators on both sides.
I am thankful that our local forests negotiated the dry season without wildfire, but also thankful for how the fires have reminded us of the fragility of life on this planet.
Setting my thankfulness in opposition this way led me to another thought. I believe it’s a mistake for us to strive for a perfect society, because a belief in perfection leads us to lack appreciation for what we have, which is never perfect. I don’t think we should be striving for utopia. I think we should be striving simply for the right to continue to strive.
We work toward a more perfect and just society, but we also have to be thankful for the struggle that is now. This struggle continues to try to improve the imperfection that we live within, while also requiring us to be fully here.
And so I am thankful, but I am not content. Here’s to hoping that in the year to come, more babbling, here on the Babblery and wherever people are speaking out and up, will bring us to a better place.
