The dreaded question: What are you thankful for?
The cliche response: My family, my friends, my house, my comfortable lifestyle.
Every Thanksgiving I wish I had something more interesting and less generic to be thankful for. I suppose I'm thankful that I happened to born into a middle-class American family, as opposed to being born into a third world country in the midst of warfare and destruction or poverty or disease. I could be thankful that I'm healthy and coherent. All this thought about how, by chance, I am who I am, reminds me of a Dave Matthews song (1):
Could I have been
A parking lot attendant
Could I have been
A millionaire in bel air
Could I have been
Lost somewhere in paris
Could I have been
Your little brother
Could I have been anyone other than me
It seems kind of ignorant to be thankful that you are yourself, and in the place where you are, when you haven't experienced any other life. Sure, you have a car and a nice house, but maybe those who aren't as well off as you have tighter family bonds, or closer friendships. I really believe that, the more material our lives are, the less meaningful they are. The more worldly things we possess, the less spiritual things we can reach. Objects tie us down. That's just my opinion, and I'm sad to say, it was heavily influenced by the character of Jack Dawson in Titanic.
So I guess while we're in our comfortable chairs, watching football, thinking about how we might puke all the turkey we just ate, yet too tired from the tryptophan to actually get up, maybe we shouldn't just be thankful that we aren't in some war-ridden, disease infested place, but maybe it should make us want to help the people who are a little more, and change things a little more, so that they have something to be thankful for too.
(1) I told you not to freak out- I still love Dave!
ramblings of a semester untold, III
12 years ago
1 comment:
So, you know how I always ask you what to write about, since I can never think of anything?
It's really creepy, because a few days ago I was thinking about what to write about again. And I realized that Thanksgiving was in a day or two. I was planning on writing a blog about how I hate Thanksgiving and I never know what to say what I'm thankful for, and it always ends up being really boring and cliche. I don't know why I never wrote it, but when I read this it was very creepy.
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