Hey friends,
I've been very much on the fence about whether to write a typical Thanksgiving post this year. It feels insensitive, in a year filled with so much bleary misery, omnipresent and suffocating fear, and righteous and unrighteous rage, to write a post about gratitude. Doing so risks invalidating the real and in so many cases insurmountable pain and suffering in this terrible year.
I therefore have to ask myself why I nevertheless choose to write this. It is perhaps a selfish exercise, in which I lay out neatly and tidily the good things that have been present in my life in the last year. It is, more constructively, an exercise in being mindfully thankful for the good things that have happened, instead of colluding with the all-or-nothingness of writing off the entirety of the last 12 months as an unadulterated calamity. It is also a record for posterity, for anyone caring to look back with curiosity over what this year was like, to hear about it with more nuance. In a way, it's also an exposure, because when goodness and happiness seem so fleeting and fragile, the act of naming them seems like a taunt to the universe to come snatch them away.
And maybe it's that last reason that is the most important reason of all: not simply because facing our fears makes us stronger, but also because it is important to remind ourselves that the goodness in our lives can, and often does, endure, even if we aren't always able to feel it.
When I wrote about "Jojo Rabbit" (2019), I had no idea how goddamned prescient my reaction to that movie was. As we've moved through the COVID-19 pandemic, I've come back to the final moments of that film often, clinging to the knowledge that humanity has survived this and worse before. After previous disastrous eras filled with suffering, our abilities to create beauty and joy remained. Even after a long dormancy, the fundamental, beautiful, resilient, brave, joyful nature of humanity is never extinguished.
- So first and foremost, I am grateful for the future, when there will come a time that this woeful, blighted year feels like a distant memory. Very likely that memory will still be painful, like a scar that still aches or pulls at the healthy skin around it from time to time. There is still a long road ahead of us before life will truly be anything resembling "normal" (whether people act like things aren't normal now or not), and there may be a long period of adjusting to being together again without mentally flinching. But someday, we'll go out into the world again. We'll take classes and wait for the bus and poke around in stores and see movies and hear live performances, we'll hug and shake hands and sing and cook and carpool and play soccer and sit next to strangers on a park bench or at our favorite restaurants and walk through crowded city centers, and it will someday just be a beautifully unremarkable everyday fact, made ever more beautiful by the reality we've been living through now. And hopefully, not too long from now, we'll be able to do the work needed to make that future not only "normal" in all the best ways we yearn for it to be normal, but also vastly, meaningfully better than it ever was before--kinder, safer, and fairer for us all.
I am also grateful for:
- My family and friends, especially those who have figured out how to show up and help me still feel loved, connected, and cared for, even though they are often far away.
- Husband, who I've many many times realized I'm so lucky to have as my co-captain in the little lifeboat we're piloting through the crashing waves of this year.
- Our cats, our dog, and our little bird. These living things that give me so much comfort and keep our home from feeling too quiet or too stiflingly still.
- My child. How could I have possibly gotten through this year without this gorgeous, bright, sweet little life fully engrossing me? I really think I might have gone insane without the demands of being my child's parent to ground and steer me.
- City Where We Met. Through this whole ordeal, even as I can't see most of it, over and over again I have been so desperately grateful to live here. Just a few days ago, I stood outside behind our home and the beauty of the sky--bright blue with racing wispy clouds blowing high overhead--knocked the wind out of me. I wanted to kiss the ground. Thank everything good in the world, I live here. Just like with my child, I don't know that I could have gotten through this year anywhere else.
- Every person who has courageously striven for a more just and equitable world, often despite real risks to their safety.
- Every person who voted to eject the corrosive, psychopathic President from an office he never deserved and has sullied every moment of his godforsaken administration.
- Abundant movies (and tv shows) that have made this year even remotely bearable.
- You, dear friends who read this blog.
