Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays.  Sure, I love the food and the football, but the meaning of the day, perhaps while not on par with its origins, means something.  Gathering people in the same space to reflect on the year, to appreciate the work and effort and take part in the harvest truly is a gift.  It is truly something to be thankful for.  It has been life changing to come out on the other side of massive shifts that have happened this year and I know I’m not alone in this.  So often it feels like being between the plates of the Earth as they shift or at the point where two waves meet—they’re not really fighting but their power comes from all sides and it can take us under.  The sheer force of it feels like we simply can’t take it.  Yet somehow, we are always pulled through because we are all here to live another day. 

Life is tumultuous and we are taught to go it alone as if it’s some marker of our own strength to endure our own personal Hells in solitude.  We feel guilt for things going our way or for wanting them to go a certain way.  We feel guilt when we win or when we lose.  We put this pressure out there to meet expectations set by no one in particular yet we act as if our life depends on it.  And we come out on the other side.  So on this day I want us to truly think about it: change requires pressure.  The formation of a diamond, a mountain, the birth of an idea, truly giving birth, all of these things require pressure to breach that final divide between thought and reality.  Life can change that quickly—we are caught in that undertow unable to see or breathe and suddenly the waves calm and we float.  Suddenly we see what we were looking for.  Suddenly it all makes sense.

On this Thanksgiving, I can’t help but feel grateful, even for that storm.  I can’t say I’m fully out of the murky weather but the truth is, I see that light, I feel the waves calming.  I understand there isn’t much I can do other than go with it.  I may have been brought under but I haven’t drowned and I am reaching safe harbor within myself.  Thanksgiving isn’t about being grateful for our things, it’s about being grateful for life itself.  Being grateful for the pressure that brings about necessary changes, for the reaping of the seeds we planted and tended to.  Having gratitude for those around us because we know not one minute of this life is guaranteed.  There’s a lot of craziness in this world that causes enough chaos as it is so we truly don’t need to add to our own burden of additional pressure and fears.  There are some storms we cannot control. But we can learn to ride them out.

For the last several years I’ve been seeking change that I very deeply wanted.  I was very deeply attached to the idea of it as well.  I started to envision life differently, knowing there was another side to the crap I was choosing to live in every day.  This year I took action toward what I wanted rather than continue to settle in the middle of crap that I could easily walk away from.  I was given an opportunity that I do not take for granted.  I needed to become something else to get where I wanted to be.  It’s uncomfortable, still to this day I feel out of place to a degree, like it’s still not quite me.  Yet here I am.  I’m closer to the vision I saw and I am so thankful for the people who have been with me on this journey, for the fruits I’m seeing after the effort of the last decade in particular.  I’m thankful for understanding that repeating mistakes doesn’t make us failures, it means that there is safety in something we know and we have to learn to find that safety within ourselves. I’m thankful to be alive, for the people in my life, for the connections that I knew I needed but couldn’t close the gap.  I’m thankful to be in a position where I can help, where I can slow down to understand the big picture and my role in it.  I’m grateful to put aside my own ego and start following the guidance that was there all along. 

If you’re reading this, that means you’ve been given the gift of life, the gift of time to find connection and purpose, to get closer to understanding yourselves and those around you.  I know on most days it’s easy to fall into the habits we’ve taught ourselves and we get caught up in the routine and the distraction thinking we are living—I know I don’t spend every day in this type of gratitude.  But I feel like we CAN.  Even if it’s not all day, we should always take a few minutes to take it in, take perspective and realize that most of what we do is filler—we don’t need to put so much weight on it.  This day shouldn’t be the only day we share what we are grateful for and it certainly isn’t the only day to be grateful for.  I think that’s what we’ve lost sight of.  We’ve been trained that it’s only the big moments that matter yet I’ve seen people who got exactly what they thought they wanted yet they still felt lacking because it wasn’t what they thought.  We need to see the little moments as the miracles they are and take pleasure in the joy of experiencing life.  We need to be grateful for the stories we’ve told, the stories we’ve told, the stories we will tell—and be grateful that we can start a new story at any time.  So be grateful.  Be happy for the successes all around, both personal and for others.  Choose to sit in joy rather than the dark.  The fact that we can see the light is truly something to be grateful for.