your teachers, parents, employers, friends, spiritual guides,
and others, acknowledging them by name. Be thankful for
the good books which you have read, inspiring sermons and
talks you have heard, as well as your own notebooks and journals.
Finally, be thankful for the challenge of your own personal future.
Be thankful for your dreams, your ideals, your hopes.
There are unlimited possibilities ahead. --Wilferd A. Peterson
Thanksgiving day comes tomorrow in the United States, and I have to say that it's difficult to think about sitting around a table being grateful for all that we have when there are so many people in the country sitting in cells, facing deportation, even if they've been contributing members of our society for years or even decades, just because they got a traffic ticket ten years ago. They're facing deportation to countries they've never been in, where they have no family or friends to support them.
It's hard to focus on my own Thanksgiving when I know that so many people are going to lose health insurance because they can't afford it any more, and that so many people can't even afford to do their food shopping these days. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs this calendar year, so they're not going to be able to furnish their normal Thanksgiving day dinner--much less provide their families with many of the things that make for a "normal" Christmas. And that's just in the States--we still have the horrors of Gaza and the Ukraine to consider, among many other ways in which people are suffering in this world of ours.
Of course, Thanksgiving day can be wonderful for me if I forget these people and the trials they're going through, but it's impossible to do that and still have a feeling of connection to all humanity. I'm a part of humanity, not a little island all on my own. "No man [person] is an island entire of itself," wrote John Donne; "every man [person] is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." And if I am a part of humanity, then other people's suffering will affect me--it's simply one of the effects of empathy and compassion.
That doesn't mean that I have to be miserable, though, thinking about how others are suffering. But it does mean that when I think of myself as a part of the whole, and I know that many who are also part of that same whole are suffering greatly, it's important that I keep them in mind, that I keep them in my heart, that I keep them in my prayers, however I choose to pray. I am thankful--extremely thankful--that I have enough money and other resources to wake up each morning in safety, and that I don't face any world-changing threats to the life I'm living at the moment. I can give thanks for what I have, but I need to recognize that it wouldn't take all that much to put me in a desperate situation, for then I can feel more empathy and compassion for those who are suffering, and I can look for ways that I can take little actions that might help them make their ways through difficult times.
Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday, and I most definitely will be thankful tomorrow (as I try to be every day). But in that thankfulness will be more than just a bit of sadness and frustration as I think of the millions of my fellow human beings who are struggling and suffering. I don't want to let that thought diminish my own gratitude, of course, for the things and the people I have in my life, but I don't want to be so strongly focused on the blessings that I have that I forget about the people whose blessings are much less abundant than mine. I hope that everyone is in my prayers and thoughts tomorrow, for love is, of course, what makes the world go 'round, and my conscious awareness of the struggles of others is definitely a show of love. The world is rarely moved in great ways to make great changes; rather, it's nudged in healthier and more loving directions by the many prayers and small actions that we all can say and take each day.
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