Rewriting Thanksgiving

Last night I went outside for something and when I came back in my dog Bay was sitting by the door waiting for me. I realized in that moment what an incredible life I have and how much I have to be thankful for. It grounded me in the truth that I live a life where people hold me up in ways I do not always see.

The minute we first wrote the story of Thanksgiving a few hundred years ago, we rewrote the history. As the years unfolded, and we learned the true depth of depravity of the early settlers, including my ancestors who go back that far, which made it clear that rather than Thanksgiving it should have been a day of thoughtful reflection on what should have been. What could have been. How we could have built a nation based on every human life having the same value from the start.

Instead, in typical American fashion, we made it into a feast of food and abundance, but not everyone could participate in the same way. By the time Thanksgiving was an American holiday, the boundaries of influence already made it so some people struggled just to try to get food on the table that looked like more to their excited expectant children.

And now here we are. When the year first started, and I was devastated and terrified and ragged and hopeless, I had no idea that the year would unfold the way it has. I consider this moment in time to be an opportunity to rebuild without the smoke and mirrors that gave that upper percentage of Americans not only control but a wonderland to walk in that hid the valleys of suffering and unfairness so many carried with dignity and a lack of complaint.

The truth is that the way our country wrote its story shaped the way many of us learned to write our own stories. We hid harm. We built myths around ourselves. We looked away from what supported us. The habits of a nation become the habits of a person. I am choosing not to look away anymore. I live a life where people take care of things for me and make my days possible in ways I do not always see and I want to see it now. I live a life where people hold me up in ways that go unnoticed unless I stop long enough to feel them. That awareness changes everything.

I have no desire to celebrate my ancestor Thomas Hinckley, the first governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I used to think about him on Thanksgiving with a little bit of pride and awe. Not so much anymore. I always thought he was a really good guy and one of the only politicians in our history to turn his power over for the greater good of his community. I still think he might have been a good guy, but that is not where I am. The rearview mirror is smaller than the windshield for a reason.

This holiday now I have renamed for myself and its definition. It is still Thanksgiving. But it is a day when I need to spend time thanking the people who gave me so much this year and in the past years, often at the expense of themselves. To take care of my home. To take care of my health. To pleasantly welcome me at the butcher when all I wanted were a few turkey thighs instead of the whole turkey. There is a plethora of people I give thanks for today who make my life the amazing life that it is. And in addition to thanking them, I need to reevaluate their compensation in comparison to mine. I need to ask myself what I should be paying them, not paying them what they are willing to work for. Those are not the same things.

It is actually fun to start over. I have moved many times in an effort to start my life over. It feels like a clean slate. Which is the name of my rebooted company, Slate Spark. From a clean slate it is so much easier to spark creativity and a clear vision for the future.

I consider this horrible year a great gift to me. I am not sure I would have ever gotten the truth of it all had this administration not been put in place.

Every morning I read the day’s entry from Brianna Wiest’s The Pivot Year. Today it says, “You would be surprised how much of the past can be forgiven and forgotten if consistently different behavior is displayed in the now.” I do not believe the past should be forgotten. That endangers the future. But I do believe that changing how I move forward fits into this perfectly. We have to change our behavior, those of us who have lived lives very different from our fellow Americans. Maybe that is the quiet truth of this day. We each need our own definition for Thanksgiving, one that tells the truth about where we are now and invites us to choose what comes next.

Happy Thanksgiving, and please accept my appreciation for what we all do each day to get it right moving forward.