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It’s time again for Thanksgiving!
A History of Giving Thanks
For most of our history, Americans have generally thought that life was hard deal. Life was tough. Difficult. Not supposed to be fair. If you worked hard and had some good luck, you might scratch out a decent life for yourself and your family. Maybe even a life a little better than your parents had.
Hard work and suffering developed toughness, resilience, character and leadership.
So, when something good happened—perhaps a good harvest in the fall or the peace after the horrors of the Civil War—Americans took the time to celebrate that goodness and give thanks for what they had. Safety from harm. Good fortune. The end of difficult times. The freedom to establish a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
In the midst of their hardships in life, Americans took time to give thanks to each other and the Creator for whatever blessings they had received.
Today, Thanksgiving is time to celebrate with family. Time to relax and prepare for the upcoming holidays. Time to get together and tell stories. Maybe even some time to get a nap in before standing in the long Black Friday lines.
Many of us, around the Thanksgiving dinner table, will stop and take some time to share what we are thankful for.
Like America, Thanksgiving stretches across boundaries, generations and ethnicities. One of my daughters’ co-workers, an immigrant from Afghanistan, told my daughter a story about how her children, at Thanksgiving, “hyper-demand” turkey and mashed potatoes. It’s a powerful way they, as Americans, share a common tradition with all other Americans.
All these are good things.
Life is Hard
That said, in today’s world giving thanks can seem counter cultural. How can we give thanks when we’re all battling challenges of one kind or another? Family problems. Problems at work. Financial problems.
The pressure can seem tremendous. Most families in America feel the financial pressure of trying to live paycheck to paycheck. They feel the social pressure of having to live in the right house in the right neighborhood while driving the right car. Our kids must be star athletes and go to the best colleges, or the family prestige is threatened.
With email and texting, we can never fully escape the pressures of work.
24/7 news cycles bombard us with continuous bad news about the nasty, never-ending and all-consuming political fights in Washington DC.
Social media connects us so well that we are no longer developing the tight, personal relationships that used to allow us to share our burdens with others. When we need support from others the most, we seem to have it the least. We have never been so well-connected and simultaneously so alone.
It’s no surprise that we’re more and more anxious and depressed as our own lives never match the perfection others project on Facebook or Instagram.
Un-Thanksgiving: Victims and Entitlements
That’s the backdrop to some growing and dangerous trends in our culture. Some un-Thanksgiving trends. Thanks for blessings are replaced with demands for entitlements.
The un-Thanksgiving trends push the idea that you don’t earn a good life, but that you’re entitled to a good life. That any pain and suffering in life aren’t opportunities for growth, but an unfair betrayal of that entitlement.
These postmodern trends push us to see ourselves as the victims of others who owe us something.
I am entitled to what I want in life and you owe it to me. And if I don’t get what I want from you, I am entitled to demonize you and bully you and be a jerk to you.
These are un-Thanksgiving trends. When you don’t get what you want you are supposed to be angry. When you do get what you want you aren’t supposed to give thanks because you were entitled to it from the beginning.
Un-Thanksgiving is dangerous because it is profoundly self-centered. You can’t understand me because we have nothing in common. I am victim. I am perpetually offended. You owe me.
One of the things that made America great was our history of helping each other. In the old days when the vast majority of Americans lived on farms, having a barn was critical for the success of your farm and family.
You had to have a barn.
But raising a barn is a big endeavor. And so, in the old days, when it was time to raise a barn, the community stopped what they were doing and all pitched in to raise that barn. Together.
Americans helping Americans raise each other’s barns so individual families and farms could be successful, and the community of families and farms could be successful together.
And after that barn was raised, they would often sit down together at a meal, and celebrate and give thanks for that new barn. That new blessing. Together.
In contrast, un-Thanksgiving has each of us waiting for everyone else to come raise my barn for me because I am entitled to that barn. You owe it to me.
Un-Thanksgiving, this postmodern understanding of life, attacks the concept of community. It sabotages the idea that we come together in community to achieve great things and make better lives for each other. Again, metaphorically, with no barns being raised, we die alone and hungry. Physically. Spiritually. Psychologically.
Good Relationships: The Key to Happiness
As I pointed out in some earlier blog/podcasts, research shows that the key to happiness and fulfillment in life is high-quality, high-trust relationships based in love. The key to your success at work and in your family is high-quality, high-trust relationships based in love. With high-quality, high-trust relationships based in love you live longer, healthier, happier, and with more success and less pain.
The un-Thanksgiving trends tear apart the very things—trust, relationship, community and love—that make us happy, successful people and a good nation.
We can do better. We must do better. We owe it to ourselves and our children.
The Blessing of Living in America
Let’s start by more deeply appreciating what we have and how fortunate, how blessed, we are to have it.
We’re living in America. Whether you were born here or immigrated here, you are blessed to live in a nation which, despite all our problems, millions of people around the world risk their lives to live in.
We didn’t earn living in America. We got lucky. We were either blessed to be born here or blessed to have the opportunity to come here while billions can’t.
No matter what problems we face in life, the blessing to live in America is probably the most unfair thing that will ever happen to us in our lives.
We are blessed with relatively stable, high-trust systems in justice, economics, health, education, agricultural/food, finance, military, government etc. These systems are imperfect, but they are the best achieved at this scale in human history.
We didn’t individually earn these. We are not entitled to these. We are blessed with these through the hard-work of tens of millions of people in our communities and nation.
And because we have been given these blessings, we have a responsibility to take these blessings and increase them for each other.
One of the things that defines us as Americans is our government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”
Be A Leader
You are not the subject of the government. As a voter, you are a leader in our government. You are not entitled to be a passive victim. You have an obligation to lead.
Its time to stop acting like entitled victims who bully those with whom we disagree.
It’s time to be active leaders who build high-quality, high-trust relationships based in love with everyone we can.
Not just the people with whom we agree politically. Not just the people who look like us or identify like us or come from the same ethnic group. Not just the people who practice our religion or share our socio-economic class.
We need to stop using the excuse that we are waiting for the “other side” to stop being bullies and be nice first. That’s being a victim, not a leader.
You are being called today, right now, to be real leader. You are being called to find some common ground, whatever it may be, to build the best, highest-trust, most-loving relationships you can with those most-unlike you.
Practicing love and developing those relationships will make you a better, happier, healthier and more successful person in all aspects of your life. Practicing love and developing those relationships will make our communities and nation the best they can be. It will inspire your kids and co-workers to do it themselves.
It gets us out of our unhappy, Un-Thanksgiving postmodern funk and back into our Thanksgiving gratitude for the blessings we share with each other.
As you share Thanksgiving, find something in common with that person at the table who is so different from you. Who has been pissing you off.
As you travel home or stand in the Black Friday lines, take the opportunity to meet new people and listen to them. Be that person who calms tense situations instead of fueling them.
As you head back to work on Monday, build high-trust, loving relationships with everyone you can. You’ll be happier and more successful in every dimension of your life.
Practicing love and developing relationships takes the blessings you have been given and multiplies them a thousand-fold. It makes you the best kind of blessing for all those around you.
Don’t just give thanks for your many blessings. Starting today, live that Thanks by being a blessing for others.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Comments
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Jeff Hamar On November 23, 2018 at 3:46 am
Great insight and a message that so many would find inspiring.