Happy Gratitude Day

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I can see dogs running if I look out the window.

My eyes, brain, and hands work well enough to write this way, even if my legs don’t.

I have a mobility scooter, and it works.  40 years ago, there were no such things, or a World Wide Web either.

Aisha gave me a hug.

Kim texted me Happy Thanksgiving.

Phillip texted me Happy Thanksgiving also.

Actually, I don’t like the term Thanksgiving anymore. It’s been stolen to teach us to feel good about genocide.  But I do think giving thanks and getting together with family and friends and celebrating the harvest time is good.  I’m starting to call it Gratitude Day.

More things in this moment…

I’ve got some turkey soup I made that really tastes good. Going to give most of it away.

Had two ideas for blogs to write.

Aisha’s reading me classes from the City College Spring catalog, and some of them sound fascinating.

Things we usually don’t remember to thank:

My heart is beating pretty regularly. My white blood cells are swimming around trying to fight off this infection. I have trillions of bacteria in my gut enjoying the fiber in the kale stew. They’re fermenting it into acetic acid and other short chain fatty acids that are good for me, while I just sit here.

Actually, are they really “my cells?” Or do they just share space in this body with my ego/personality?  Maybe each cell is a living being – they certainly lived independently at one time. Perhaps I should think of myself as an ecosystem, not a solitary being.

I guess you can tell I like my cells. You might like yours, too, but have you ever been thankful to molecules? Right now, insulin molecules are taking the glucose from lunch into cells for use. Serotonin molecules keep me from being depressed. Thousands of other kinds of molecules, trillions all told, are doing important jobs without any attention from me.  I’m thankful for all of that.

And the larger life forms – like the farmers and farmworkers, the delivery people and store people who got the food to me.  The insects and worms who made the soil, and the bacteria and fungi (shrinking again, I know) that make the soil a good place to grow.  Have to thank them, too, and the beautiful birds flying outside the window.

Grateful for friends, neighbors, colleagues, comrades in Jewish Voice for Peace, and especially family, who even if they’re not with me physically in the moment, are in my heart and give me love  and pleasure and reasons to live.

And the sun and the moon, and the water – Water is Life –  and whoever made them.

Thanks to Diabetes Self-Management and everyone who has published my work over the years and sometimes paid me for it.

I could go on with this list. In fact, it might be endless. That’s why some people get tired of listing them and just thank God instead.  It’s the same thing.

I know that nobody, from the microorganisms and molecules to the computer programmers, do what they do “for me.”  They’re doing it for themselves, because that’s who they are, and I benefit from it. We all do.

If that’s how things are, I guess others benefit from what we do, too. So be thankful – it’s the surest road to happiness. Try being grateful and sad at the same time. It’s really hard, perhaps impossible. If sadness does creep in, find something else to be thankful for.

So Happy Gratitude Day.  Every day.

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