This might have been the first Thanksgiving where I actually had the thought, “We might all be a little too thankful.”
If this thought takes you by surprise, you’re in good company — it took me by surprise, as well.
Most of the time during this festive season, and most of the time in general, I am complaining about the thanklessness of my generation.
In many respects, we are the generation who has had a lot handed to us.
That isn’t to say we don’t have our own struggles and challenges, but you would be hard pressed to say life is harder now than it was 50 years ago.
In fact, for most of us, it would be hard to say we have it harder than our parents.
But even that aside, it seems Thanksgiving itself is overshadowed with the greed embodied in the mad consumer rush of Black Friday.
That isn’t to say shopping or bargain hunting is bad, but it always seems like we go a little too far on this particular ?occasion.
You always hear those partly amusing/partly sad anecdotes of people waiting outside a store for days just to buy something they probably don’t need in the first place.
So in light of all of that, why do I think we might be too thankful?
While I was listening to a relative go into the value of being thankful and the great blessing we all share in as Americans and as part of this particular family, I couldn’t help but disagree.
But not in the sense that we aren’t lucky to have all of those things.
We are extremely blessed.
If you really think about it, should we really be as thankful for our food as we are for our health?
Or are we really as grateful to live in America as we are to have a family who loves us?
Surely, not. Surely, there has to be some sort of hierarchy or at least some distinction.
If I have to be thankful for everything that happens, I begin to wonder if I am truly thankful for anything at all.
There’s an element of contrast that makes thankfulness so ?meaningful.
If everything is special, then nothing is. It’s normal, standard.
The label of “special” belongs to the few.
It’s what’s rare, something we don’t get or see every day.
I, for one, want ?Thanksgiving to be ?special.
So maybe next year, we can stop praising how good the pumpkin pie is and expressing our gratitude for the nice weather and our football team’s victory.
Maybe next year we can instead focus on the things that are really important and that really matter.
Maybe we can actually focus on the things worth spending an entire day celebrating in the first place.
cgerst@indiana.edu
