Thanksgiving 2020

Couldn't resist the double entendre in the title.  

We may have to squint a little to see the good stuff but it's there.  It's always there and it always has been.

I myself am prone to nearsightedness - easy to be grateful for what I can see and smell and hold right here, right now.  Today these are plentiful.

Retrospective gratitude... well, that's another thing entirely, isn't it.  Particularly when there are painful, ugly chapters in our story and really we're just relieved to have survived them.  

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I was most certainly not grateful for a lot of it - and if I'm honest, I wasn't particularly grateful for much of anything until I was at least thirty.  I could not feel thankful because I was in a constant state of victimhood - why should I be grateful when life was a constant shit show?  Somebody owed me for putting me through all that chaos and I walked around with a chip on my shoulder bigger than any redwood tree.  

Hell no I wasn't grateful - God and everybody (including me) had screwed me over. 

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Life hurts sometimes.  It just does, and nobody gets a pass...but we DO have the ability to choose how to live with it.  

As nutty as it sounds, being grateful for our difficulty is also the analgesic for it.  I feel better when I feel thankful.  In this sense, gratitude not only acknowledges a gift but it is a gift in itself.  

Perhaps you've heard the saying, "Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting on someone else to die".  So goes it with a lack of gratitude - I am the person who suffers most because I am intentionally blinding myself to the goodness in my life.  

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Taking it a step further, I have also negated the creative benefit of pain.  I'm not talking about the influence of pain on artistic expression, although that's certainly one aspect.  

No, what I'm saying is that pain creates us.  We cannot become our better selves if we only know comfort and ease.  

Painful experiences shape us;  we either become bitter people or better people.  The silver lining serves as a tether, a lifeline that grounds us and mitigates emotional tornado damage.  

Without gratitude, bitterness is inevitable and it is a miserable existence.  Bitter people are hard to be around and even harder to live with.  In this respect, gratitude is also a preventive measure against the pain of loneliness. 

Gratitude redeems pain - it acknowledges the value of our troubles.  And we can't fully experience joy unless we've known sorrow.

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I'm not endorsing rose-colored glasses.  I'm really not.  I'm just suggesting that you check yourself for the crap-colored ones because when you wear them, that's all you will see, plus you'll probably get some on you.  Gross.

This post was actually prompted by the flood of people giving thanks for this and that on Facebook over the past several days.  My inner judgy sourpuss (let's call her Cleo) likes to think that everyone is up to no good and deemed it as insincere virtue signaling.  Look here, everybody!  See me being grateful?  I'm super blessed, definitely more blessed than you.

What a jerk.  As soon as I mentally gagged Cleo, I recognized that people were projecting warmth and appreciation through social media versus "woe is me" and "the sky is falling".  They were celebrating undeserved goodness and giving thanks for gifts and opportunities. The sincerity of their thankfulness is irrelevant and actually none of my business - besides, some very smart people have taught me the inestimable value of fake it till you make it.   

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Gratitude.  It's good for what ails ya.  And it will make all the difference when we look back on 2020.

The Lesser of Two Evils

My ballot arrived in the mail last Monday and has been sitting on the kitchen table ever since. I've walked past it every day, telling myself, "I've got to take care of that today".

What I really mean is "make a decision already, you can't waffle forever".

I frequently feel insulted by my Facebook friends who openly loathe Republicans in writing - for I am a registered Republican. I am a fiscally conservative social moderate from the now-ancient era of "big tent" tolerance with a sincere sense of social responsibility, gender equality, gay rights, women's rights and anti racism.

I don't see anyone on this ballot who represents me - like other recent elections, I'm forced to choose the lesser of two evils. Which ticket should I vote against? That's the choice I've been given.

I posted on Facebook earlier this year about my disappointment in the Republican Party - that the party defaulted to the incumbent instead of allowing us to choose who would run on the Republican ticket. Long before he ever held public office, I thought DJT was a cartoon, a parody of rich white man extremism.  

Granted, I was probably naive to think that there would be an actual contest to determine the GOP's nomination, but that was my hope.

I was derided by friends on both sides of the aisle for that post. Some Democrat friends criticized me for coming out as a Republican, and some members of the GOP blasted me for not falling in line with the party faithful in supporting Mr. Trump. Although I want to believe that the goal was not to hurt me, one family friend said "your father is turning over in his grave". That brings angry tears to my eyes even now - the last thing Dad would've done is to shame me, particularly not for just wishing aloud that we had a choice.

Joe Biden seems fairly inoffensive; I can't say that about Donald Trump. But I also can't say that about Kamala Harris or Mike Pence. Within the first five minutes of the VP debate, she was sneering and rolling her eyes at her opponent - openly hostile and demonstrably rude. Yet Pence's behavior wasn't much better - he talked over her regularly, interrupting both her and the moderator. I'm probably old fashioned in this regard, but I would expect a certain degree of mutual respect in a debate forum. Whatever you think of someone's talking points, that person has busted their ass to earn the right to be there, sitting across from you and expressing their position. Neither ticket has any respect for the other one - it makes me sick.

I would also expect both candidates to respect the moderator's authority and the clearly articulated and mutually accepted terms for time to speak. So far NOBODY has done that, although I think the GOP candidates have been worse offenders than the Dems in that regard. Seriously, the two debates we've had thus far are one step above a train wreck - and we can't just look away.

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Last week I got a bill in the mail - it said "Statement Enclosed" on the outside of the envelope. Yet in the upper left hand corner, the return address was Donald J. Trump, The White House - with his name in ridiculously oversized font. Thanks to my official affiliation with the party, I have gotten plenty of fundraising requests over the last 6 months or so... but this was a bill, an invoice for monies due, plain and simple.

So let me get this straight. Because I profess to be a Republican, I am getting a bill for $45 because my name isn't on a list he received?

Sure, it says that the $45 is the "amount requested" on the statement, but this entire mailing was designed to suggest that I owe this money to his campaign. Brother, if I was on the fence before, this particular piece of mail went a long way towards shoving me off to the left.

A bill. Because there's a list and he's "extremely shocked" to find my name missing from those of his dedicated friends.

What to do, what to do. I would vote for Biden but he's older than dirt and I don't believe Kamala Harris has an iota of conservatism in her body. Small government, people. Big government promulgates itself to the point where we have to have job furloughs and borrow money from other countries just to keep the lights on - the bigger the government, the greater the debt.

But Trump sent me a bill along with a letter that expresses his personal disappointment in me but also clearly demonstrates hyperbolic hysteria and a complete lack of self-awareness. Buddy, I wouldn't give you forty-five cents. And Pence is so meh - it feels like voting for drywall.

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But I HAVE to vote. I HAVE to make a decision. I can't ignore it, I can't just accidentally forget to do it. Talk about my daddy turning over in his grave, not to mention my mother and all the grandparents.

I'm giving some thought to writing in Condi Rice or Nikki Haley or Ben Carson.  I would've written in Herman Cain in a heartbeat but he had to up and die before I had the chance.

Or maybe I'll just go with my gut - Dolly Parton 2020 !!