Give Thanks.

“You’re awesome Dad.”

I looked up from cleaning the humidifier I had just pulled out of the basement. Several weeks of waking up with my sinus cavities feeling like the Sahara desert had motivated me sufficiently to descend into the miasma of spider webs and mouse turds that compose the death pit that is my basement.

My daughter sat propped up against her brother’s bed, looking at me with one eye open and one eye closed. In her hand was a wet washcloth that she kept applying to her squinted eye. I had been eating pumpkin pie when she came up and asked me to teach her how to cook an egg. Simple enough, but some oil had popped and splattered her eye. There was no long-term damage, but her eye was still tender. To her benefit, she did an amazing job cooking the egg.

A brief segue. My daughter is terribly clumsy. Every time she comes to visit my house, she generally accrues some type of structural damage. It’s not that we’re not careful, it’s just that she’s...clumsy. She was running around at night playing with her brothers when she fell on the gravel road and skinned her knee something awful. One day she asked me to watch how fast she could ride her bike. I watched as she pumped full tilt around the yard in delight at her speed. Then she peeled off along the down hill gravel driveway that T intersects our ¼ mile gravel dead-end road. I yelled at her to stop but too late, she went right off the end of the road into the itch weed. Now the latest, splattered cooking oil.

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“Well...you teach me stuff.” She replied, looking like a pirate all squinty-eyed at me.

“What kind of stuff?”

“Well...like how to cook. Nobody ever showed me how to cook before. My mom won’t let me near the stove, even if it’s off!”

I laughed.

“Or the microwave!” She continued.

I thought back to how I responded to “I’m hungry” requests earlier. Fridge full of Thanksgiving left-overs. I got all the containers out of the fridge, set them up on the kitchen table with a couple plates and told my kids to make their own plates, microwave them for a minute and thirty seconds, let them cool for a couple minutes, and put the food up when they were done. They didn’t need any hand-holding. They’re smart kids.

“Well thank you baby. Come here.”

My daughter snuggled up close to me and I kissed the top of her head. As I sat there holding my daughter I thought of what this Thanksgiving season means to me.

I’ve done verbal sparring over the historical origins of Thanksgiving with those who are out to push a particular agenda, on both sides of the political aisle. That brings me some respite from boredom, but the meaning of Thanksgiving to me transcends the petty appeal of proving your dissenters stupid. It means exactly what it says, giving thanks. What are you thankful for? Then give thanks for that.

The science of gratitude is well known. The Secret, the Power of Positive Thinking, etc. It’s no secret. One of the first prayers I ever said was simply “Thank you.” Now we can get into the debate of Higher Powers, but I’d rather not. That’s besides the point. The point is that if you are grateful for the good things in your life, then you will receive more things to be grateful for. There is power in gratitude, this is a non-secret that has been known for a long time.

So what am I grateful for, I thought, as my daughter pressed her head into my chest. My daughter, one of the brightest and insightful children I’ve ever met, albeit clumsy. My sons, all three crazies that they are. Wild and erratic and exhaustingly rowdy all of them, but with wide open eyes and huge hearts full of compassion when the time is necessary. A beautiful wife, that patiently puts up with most if not all of my crap. A family that has stood by me through thick and thin, and never stopped supporting me even when I didn’t know if I could or wanted to support myself.

I hesitate to say there is something that I’m grateful for more then all of that. Those are all wonderful things. But I do feel in my gut that I am overall most grateful for the life I’ve been given, in this time that I’ve been given it. I could have been born at any point in history before this, with all it’s injustices and misery. But I live now, as we as a species are truly on the verge of a golden age. The power of technology, the free and open Internet, the destabilizing power of Bitcoin to invest mankind with it’s own monetary sovereignty, and an awakening consciousness that is changing every aspect of life as we know it. Truly an exciting time to be alive, and I thank God every day for allowing me to live now, and with all the strength and support and love he has blessed me with.

So don’t feel alone this Thanksgiving Holiday, even if you are. You have a power and ability inside of you to change any aspect of your life that you feel holds you down or oppresses you. You live in the most wonderful time and place in history, on the verge of a true awakening of human unity and consciousness. Give thanks to all that you have and have had. Open your heart to the gifts that you’ve been given and see that as long as you draw breath, you can always receive more.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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