I am thankful for a lot of things. I am thankful to be alive.
I was reading The Week recently. The “World at a Glance” is never really sunshine and rainbows. Everyday it seems that the world gets just a little darker. The problems abroad compete with the overwhelming dread here in the states. “The States at a Glance” isn’t much better at making good sleep.
In all, the world just seems to be worse than it was. We don’t have the simplicity of 1980s Americana. We can’t go back to that world either. I can watch all the Young Sheldon I want, it won’t come back.
We joke about it all the time, the theories that all of the world has gone downhill since Harambe’s death, or the theory that we might be saved from our own problems by dashing out to another planet. These can help distract us from the overwhelming problems that are all around us, but they don’t ever become any more true. We can’t run from the present.
We stand at the precipice of the United States Semiquincentennial anniversary. Our country has existed for 249 years as of this year. We look back as close as 50 years and hope for those days again. 1976 wasn’t the most wonderful time either. The world was being racked by terror and every American was entirely aware of the dark side of liberty. Still we look back fondly.
It seems that every so often America gets into these fits of rebellion and change. It seems now that we aren’t, or at least are better off not, going back. America is just not the great narrative of freedom we were told in Elementary school.
So are we; there is just a difference of scale compared to the national torrent around us. We see the presidency as the great tower which we can aspire to, the pinnacle of our hopes and dreams. We want these people to fulfill our every desire. We want the world around us to change, and carry us all along further. It’s not easy, it’s not fun to carry all of the world forward. We hope and pray that those we believe in will carry us on. In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, “do you want to be the ebb of this great flood?”
That was really the question of my life. I was frankly a most disgusting sort of person. I don’t deny this foul man, I don’t deny this past. I was him.
I was the sort of person always ignorant of his own ignorance, an ignoramus. I was a banker bragging of the wealth which has long left him. I would argue, invoking the memory of Socrates, with the actual prowess of your corner store cashier. This might be who I am now, but that I cannot know until time has made it most apparent to me.
Eventually, the speaker loses his audience at long last in his exhaustion of voice. I lost some of the friends which I had held for a long time. I always had a way of taking any current event and making a muck of it. There was nothing really positive about me. There was nothing I valued, except for that lifeblood of approval. I don’t blame them anymore.
A friend recently told me: “How come we haven’t been friends before?” In short, because I was a twat.
That is just how time works. I am sure that most of us Seniors feel this way.
Back then though, life got rough. When a jester loses his audience, when an inquisition loses their supply of heathens, they lose their purpose. I had finally pushed away all of the people I knew. Why would they want a person who thought everything that came across them was theirs to judge and worthy of criticism?
I had finally lost all purpose in my life. And thus, I, like Zarathustra, “began to go under.”
There was no net of life to catch me. It was a hard time. It’s still a hard time, but that is the paradox of the edge. You go to find escape, but find no relief. I had reached such a dark corner and lost all vision of what lies in front of me.
I know that thankfulness isn’t the most perfect solution to life, but thankfulness does have its merits. It’s what allows time to give you that much needed perspective. You need the bad to see the good; you need thankfulness to realize the good when the bad has gone away.
It is thankfulness which frankly characterizes my life now. I know that I could still be more thankful, both feeling it and being it. Nonetheless, I am thankful. Maybe it’s the perspective that I have now, I see the pit I was in. It’s still open, still able to engulf me, but I stand on the edge. I am constantly aware that I am not in the hole. Life got better. I have climbed out of the hole.
Honestly, that is the spirit of this season. It’s the turkey and the badly represented origins of our nation, but it’s really just thankfulness. It’s recognizing that while we want so much in this life, life won’t be able to fulfill them, and at long last being content with that absurdity. It’s seeing the world’s great wave of change and being content in its absurdity. It’s seeing despair and holding on to hope, regardless of the absurdity.
That is what I am thankful for, hope. I am thankful to be alive.
For those who felt that any of this may have resonated with them in way most unsatisfactory, or for those who feel that they may too be in the hole:
Here is the California Mental Health Hotline: 988
Life gets better. Finding help is worth it. It was for me.
