In the last year, I’ve learned a great deal about how to approach the topic of weekends and holidays; especially holidays that celebrate being with family, that are centered around food and festivities, giving and receiving. It’s a tight rope walk that requires sensitivity and careful wording, so as not to elicit hurt with the reminder of absence, loss, and having less. And with this in mind, I often found myself reflecting on the idea of thanksgiving this week. Not Thanksgiving as in parades, feasting, or gearing up for Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, but the acknowledgement and celebration of gratitude. I’ve been making it a point this year to pay close attention to the small glimpses of humanity I see when out and about, at work, in my neighborhood, and at home…how strangers can share singular, fleeting moments of kindness with others and even with themselves…and it seems that we need these soul lightening moments more than ever in an age of civil and self hostility that weighs heavy on so many. I had this glimmering realization that we are all the living embodiment of thanksgiving, and that at the root of it is not what we have or can contribute in material things and financially, nor what we don’t have and can’t contribute by those means…it’s about what our presence and existence adds to the story we are writing each day; the interactions, conversations, and opportunities we have with others and with ourselves. The idea and act of thanksgiving isn’t just the gratitude we express to others, it’s also the gratitude we should have for our individual selves. It’s not an uplifting point to speak on, knowing that there are children and adults who will be alone or unable to be with their loved ones this holiday season, it’s in actuality a heartbreaking and sobering reality for far too many, but if I’ve come to understand anything in this last year, it’s that even if you only have your thoughts to keep you company this long weekend, I hope you know that to someone out there, possibly a complete stranger you shared a fleeting moment of kindness with, you are a spark fueling the flame of thanksgiving that spreads to and through the masses beyond the calendar borders of November.

E. A. O'Connell. November 2019