What's It All About (Thanksgiving?)

 


Before I start this post, I'd like to say that I'm NOT a member of any cult that swaps people's identity and never have been, nor will I ever be. I am myself, Brian Joseph Johns, the creator of most everything you see and read here at Shhhh! Digital Media. Other artists who contribute are credited appropriately throughout the site and for their work, I am also grateful. 


The music that graces many places in this site (through hyperlinks) is all credited as well, and once again, I'm grateful to be able to use it in the context of storytelling. Finally, I'm an atheist that leans toward Buddhism and Taoism but I'm far from devout. Enough clarification about identity.


I did most all of my Thanksgiving shopping this week and cooked my feast, including a 4.8 kg turkey that I cooked with an Asian glaze sauce I crafted with a variety of ingredients, complete with stuffing and an assortment of veggies and pasta as well. I had all of this done by late Friday afternoon. 


That's enough food to last me about a week or more, so I'll be eating quite well over this weekend and into next week. There's about fifteen pounds of precooked food from my home cooked Thanksgiving meal alone, not to mention some wine and drink to go along with it all. So I have much about which to be grateful. No matter the menace that life can sometimes deal you, you have to stop and be grateful for what you have, when there are many other places where people struggle on a daily basis just to eek out a meagre existence by comparison. Our standard of living is very good, even from the lowest perspective one can have in society. 


Our aim is always geared to improving our standard of living, and that's a good thing, until you lose perspective with regard to how much worse it actually could be. That by no means alone justifies silencing those who protest in order to advance our standard of work and living, but it does give you a reference point on the compass of life with regard to such matters and so that we can orienteer ourselves with regard to such standards.


Thanksgiving is all about that humbling reference point, that some of us have experienced while at our lowest. When such things do happen in that regard, one's life becomes an example of how challenging life actually can be, that it reminds us of that for which we have to be grateful.


Thanksgiving Day, in a modern sense has a lot of stigmatic attachments that are associated with the reconciliation movement and those who wish to "correct" the historical record to erase the realities of history, and recall a vision of history that simply did not ever exist. Thanksgiving Day might represent the early beginnings of colonization and the invasion and appropriation of indigenous land by the colonizers, but I think that Thanksgiving Day doesn't represent that at all.


Though that is the historical reference point to which the holiday can be traced, that only represents a starting point in time when people learned to pool their resources and work together to create a feast that commemorates being thankful for what we actually have.


Those initial feasts, involved pilgrims and members of the indigenous community coming together to make up for their shortcomings in food by combining their mutual wealth thereof, so that they could celebrate what they had, not what they hadn't. The holiday itself is associated with that time in history, but it actually means to be grateful for what you have, not bitter about what you haven't.


If you can't enjoy what you have right now, then how the heck are you going to enjoy what you get in the future? The things you lust after? The things you want? The way things should be? The pursuit of happiness isn't about the future, that point when you get what you think will make you happy. I think that Sheryl Crow got it exactly right with the lines from one of her songs:


I don't have digital
I don't have diddly-squat
It's not having what you want
It's wanting what you've got*


You'll never truly appreciate happiness until you can be thankful for what you've got. Its not something that you're going to find in the future. Its something that you have to find in yourself right now. That's what Thanksgiving Day is about.


There will be more updates today (Saturday October 7, 2023) for the two new stories I began yesterday and possibly some other goodies to come in the near future.


Until then, I leave you with the music of Sheryl Crow to ponder about being grateful for what you have...


[Music: Soak Up The Sun - Sheryl Crow]


I'll be passing on the fudge thank you. I'd prefer some of my own Shhhh! Digital Media goodness and badness... 


Happy Thanksgiving Day from Shhhh! Digital Media from its headquarters here in Canada,


No polarity reversals here (except for the alternating current system of electricity). I say what I mean and mean what I say. Not the opposite of what I express.


Write on! 😉


*Lyrics provided by Genius.com