I’ve complained and been ungrateful enough for everyone. Looking back on the despair of not being able to go on every single trip possible, to not be able to afford the hottest and newest styles, oh the horror.
To say this is the best time to be alive is an understatement. The poorest people in our society now live better than royalty lived 150 years ago, and that’s not an exaggeration. So why are we so miserable? Why do we think our lives are so horrible, and why are we so ungrateful for this amazing world we have been blessed with?
On the 3rd Thursday of every November, we celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States. The last two years would make one think we have less to be thankful for, but quite the contrary, we most certainly do.
The First Thanksgiving historically occurred in 1621 in Plymouth Massachusetts. The Mayflower carried 102 religious separatists looking for a new life. What they found was intense suffering. Most didn’t leave the ship the first winter and suffered from malnutrition, scurvy, and a myriad of other ailments. The following year they all came ashore and began to try to build a life. To their astonishment, they encountered a native man, Squanto, who not only helped them grow corn and fish, but also spoke fluent English. You can’t make that up.
Squanto was kidnapped and brought to England, where he learned English and then escaped back to North America on an exploration ship. The luck of that is quite astonishing on any measure. The first harvest proved successful, and the colonies’ Governor William Bradford decided to have a celebratory feast. He asked the Native Americans that helped them to join, and voila, the first Thanksgiving meal.
In 1789, George Washington issued a proclamation for a day or more of thanks for the nation. This continued for the next few administrations. In 1819, New York officially made it an annual holiday, followed by several other States. Not until Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of the Civil War in 1863, did it become an official national holiday.
Gratitude is a quality similiar
to electricity: It must be produced
and discharged and used up in order to
be useful at all- William Faulker
The first Thanksgiving celebrated something simple..survival. Life was incredibly more difficult, even 100 years ago, than it is now. So why are we so miserable? Why do so many people feel life is so difficult? I was able to hear a possible explanation at a speech in France in 2016. I can’t recall the speaker’s name, but she hypothesized that life is so easy now and our brains are so trained to difficulty and daily problems, that we can’t grasp the reality of how easy and great our lives are. In turn, we create problems in our own heads and suffer depression. Don’t know if further research has been done, but it sure made a lot of sense to me. I do know that suicide rates in the UK over the last 150 years, were at the lowest during wars. The problems were real, but so was the sense of belonging.
Let’s count down some of the ways in which our lives are better now than at any time in history.
Global war is at its lowest in history, same for genocide
Illiteracy is near nonexistent in the US
Infant mortality was 462/1000 births in 1800, today it’s near 5
Malnutrition doesn’t exist in the US anymore
We haven’t had a war on our soil in 180 years
The majority of the most deadly diseases have been eradicated
There is an endless litany of examples of how life is just flat-out amazing in 2021. Consider Covid, which is worse than the Black Plague by all measures. Covid has killed .002% of Americans. The Black Plague led to the death of half of Europe. You read that correctly, half. The Black Plague still exists, it just doesn’t kill anyone due to the amazing advances in medical technology. This should be at the top of our thankful list.
I dare say, we as a society really lack perspective and don’t properly appreciate the fantastic world we live in. However, we could all use a boost in appreciation for what we have. The simple mindset of thankfulness would change our entire outlook on life, make us better neighbors, and a more successful and happy citizenry.
Imagine waking up and appreciating being healthy, having a home, enough food, and a bed to sleep in. To say your mental health would improve is an understatement.
On one of my deployments years ago, I had a great conversation with a fellow soldier, an African American guy from Georgia. We were great friends and very open with each other and we could talk about anything. We discussed the end of slavery and I casually mused “but aren’t you glad you aren’t in Africa today and living comfortably in the US?" His response was a lesson for me… “Not at all, have you ever seen videos or documentaries, don’t they all seem happy? They have everything they need.” They did, and I was silenced.
What a lesson to be learned. In fairness to me, I was 19 years old, so don’t judge me too harshly. Today, I practice mindfulness and complete a personal mindfulness journal every day. It’s easy to get caught up in a world of materialism and not be satisfied with what we have, but it is essential.
When you think about work,
don’t wake up in the morning and say
I HAVE to go to work, say I GET to go to work- Steve Harvey
A simple turn in our outlook about what we are blessed with will change your life forever. I know it did mine. So this Thanksgiving, don’t go through the motions; actually write down the things and people in your life you are thankful for. And I mean write down everything. Have a great pillow that helped you sleep better? Write it down.
Write a list of every person who has added something to your life, and contact them to thank them. That will go a long way for both of you. We aren’t guaranteed or promised anything in life, it’s time we pony up and become grateful for the abundance of blessings we all have, and realize we live in the easiest and best time to be alive in all of history.
Happy Thanksgiving
I believe ppl are miserable because they can't appreciate any form of happiness unless it's more material.