LITTLE ROCK — I wrote the initial version of this column in 2001 and decided to republish it during the Thanksgiving weekend because-even after 11 years-it seems to me that its content remains just as relevant, probably even more so.
It’s the ideal week to step out of life’s ever-changing river of events and spend a few moments along its bank examining the sheer nature of thankfulness.
What does it mean to be thankful, anyway? And just what, at any given time, are we thankful for? Are we the only creatures capable of recognizing and expressing gratitude?
And is thanks, in and of itself, an inherently spiritual quality, or is it one rooted largely in appreciation for all the material comforts we can acquire in a lifetime?
In today’s society, it’s a safe bet that many of us are thankful simply to be breathing. We with silvering hair and increasing wrinkles also likely share common gratitude for what health we still have, as well as that of our loved ones and friends.
After all, without health, all our vacations and material acquisitions pale in significance and meaning. We are thankful to live in a unique and desirable place like Arkansas with all its hills and water and decent folks.
Most of us probably feel pretty much the same about being thankful to have employment and a sense of security, along with a meaningful purpose for even being alive. We are thankful for freedom and the capacity to love, and being able to share meaningful moments of this fragile and fleeting lifetime with those close to us.
In Afghanistan today, people are thankful just to be flying a kite, or shaving a beard, or listening to music. In much of Africa, a candy bar is a truly wondrous gift.
If you agree so far, then it is not a stretch to wonder why we have purposely created (and live in) a society geared primarily toward acquiring as many things as possible, rather than emphasizing substance and relevance to our deeper selves.
I have a closet filled with clothes. Several pair of shoes. You may, too. Yet we probably would not include them on a list of things for which we feel thankful. The same for my car, television set and fast food. Yet these things are what we are continually told we need, aren’t they?
Everywhere we turn, from street corners to our living rooms, is the constant bombardment of advertisements screaming for our attention and dollars. Each one encourages-no, it insists-that we acquire and devour more and more stuff so we can achieve happiness, and thereby become thankful.
Yet we realize as a nation and individually that surrounding ourselves with all these piles for which we feel little, if any, thanks has just the opposite effect upon our psyches and spirits. We simply take it all for granted. And we want more of everything. Am I right?
Yet the more we acquire in the race of this mindless and futile pursuit of physical excess, the more we must carry around and pay to insure and fret over keeping safe and dry. We must create places to store it all; either that, or hold garage sales to unload the stuff for pennies on the dollar.
A day such as this one provides an opportunity-that is, if we can manage to pull ourselves away from our forms of diversion such as gorging,the couch and television-to seriously reflect upon how we are choosing to spend our one lifetime.
Are you really spending the days of your life the way you want to in a way that inspires genuine fulfillment and thanksgiving? If not, why not? What is preventing you from getting on with doing what your spirit cries out to do?
Does anyone with a better than a sixth-grade education really believe he or she was put here to see how much money can be made in 75 years? How many mindless television programs can we escape into? How many pounds can one pile onto a divinely tuned body?
Are these activities and diversions why we all come to exist for a few years in this world? Is there no higher calling or meaning than food and fun?
I’m one who believes there’s much more. So do others in America who increasingly are forsaking the ankle deep shallows of mundane existence for deeper pools of significance.
The terrible events of Sept. 11, 2001, triggered reflection in millions across the nation. Seeing the Afghan people and their children being thankful for the joys of music and kites did the same in me.
Despite the popular expectations and endless commercials that promote them, it seems to me that Thanksgiving isn’t about honoring gluttony and financial acquisitions in stores the next morning.
It is a few moments during our lifetimes set aside solely to offer heartfelt thanks to the loving force that created our consciousness then released it into the most wondrous democratic republic, rather than into the hells of existence inside places such as Afghanistan or Iraq, or Russia, or India, or Africa, or Korea, or Bosnia, or South America, or Bosnia-or, well, you name it.
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Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com.
Editorial, Pages 79 on 11/25/2012