It has never been harder to feel thankful than this November, but life is never all downside, even when most of it feels bad. I’m thankful that there are two kinds of suffering, and one leads to less suffering. I will be forever grateful if that is the case.
Gratitude is never far from my mind and the list of things I’m thankful for is, as ever, long, but this year, as I did back in 2016, I’m looking beyond the usual:
I’m thankful for Sondheim songs sung with deep feeling by a 92-year-old tenor, who sounds as if he has lived it all
For poems that uplift and delight, fashioning a language more beautiful than I ever imagined possible
For sermons that soothe the soul and get to the world’s deep-heart core
I’m thankful to be living in a town, located at the intersection of independence and interdependence, change and continuity, which fosters interconnection and engagement
And I’m thankful for this platform — to be forced, deadline by deadline, to clothe all this in words
I’m thankful to be living in the heartland, removed, for the moment anyway, from hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires, an only-temporary reprieve from the ravages of climate change
I’m thankful for Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, who deserved better but who gave us their best shot and represented our best shot at having decency prevail
I’m thankful if we learned enough from the last wave of stupidity to sweep this country to see us through the upcoming awful sequel
I’m thankful that getting older has its consolations and compensations — experience, wisdom, perspective, grandkids, buoyancy, ego reduction, heightened appreciation of beauty
I’m thankful for the myriad of remarkable, very human, beings who populate my life
For companionship and partnership, for people who pitch in, who have skill sets exceeding mine, who are willing to share their know-how and expertise
I’m thankful for young minds, firing at peak performance, who will take us further
I’m thankful for change, internal and external, for the capacity to change, learn, grow, stretch beyond limits, even as we become more limited physically with age
I’m thankful that we do not become brittle, that something in us stays supple
I’m thankful for simplicity in its many elegant forms
That I can look around on a perfectly ordinary day and remember how good it is to be alive
That most of my crying these days is the good kind, released by encounters with truth, beauty, nobility, grace and goodness
I’m thankful, as I was in 2016, that there is so much more to life than politics, that I’ve lived long enough to fit even a calamity like this election into a wider context
I’m thankful that the disappointments of life are inseparably intertwined with its joys
For those who add to the world’s beauty and teach us how and where to look for it
I am thankful for the shared path through life because it is inclusive, which will triumph in the long run over the divisiveness of exclusivity
I’m thankful for the long run, thankful that we can pass the torch as our faculties falter, thankful for the release of perfectionism, which is too heavy a burden to bear
I’m thankful for the ability to let go and also the ability to hang on — to what is important and especially to those we love
I am thankful that our capacity to love grows as we “grow” older instead of withering on our aging stalk — a ripened, less self-centered love, a love more freely given, a bond stronger than the centrifugal forces that would pull us apart, stronger, I pray, than death itself
I’m thankful for love’s gravity, which is more like the moon’s, lighter than earth’s, allowing us to outleap our “surly bonds” and soar
I am thankful for being as well as becoming, and for patience when it pays dividends
I’m thankful for the gift of acceptance — without resignation — and the ability to make the best of bad situations, thankful too for knowing when not to accept what is plainly wrong
I’m thankful that there is more to us than meets the eye and more to us than ego
I’m thankful for the dreams we pursue in our waking state and the dreams that visit and replenish us in the night
I am thankful that we have the capacity for gratitude even during the darkest times
For resilience and persistence, even when we long to just give up
I am thankful for the mystery of it all
To whatever — and/or whoever — makes all this possible, in spite of everything,
I am deeply thankful