I have started, deleted, and restarted this essay several times. It’s not easy to write about tragedy, even having a fair amount of distance from it. That isn’t what has made the writing difficult. I won’t pretend to have a false set of emotions rendering me incapable of words.
But now it’s Thanksgiving, so perhaps the theme of the day can change the way I approach the essay enough to allow me finish writing it. Maybe it will be easier to give you a refrain of the things I am thankful for, without sounding glib. But I would also like to tell you some things I am not thankful for, in hopes that the blessings will choke out the complaints like the weed chokes the flower, and yes, I realize the blessings are the weed in that metaphor.
Fair warning: these are not your happy-go-lucky thanksgiving items. These days, I am feeling philosophical, if not pessimistic, about the world. Onward.
I am thankful for a country where I can write what I want, freely, and without reservation. And that anyone else can too.
I am not thankful for the denigration of that freedom by those who would use it to simultaneously elevate the atrocities of the West to the main stage of world history while at the same time using those atrocities to justify one of the most vile terror attacks in modern history. I have the words for what happened on October 7th. Words like massacre, barbarism, evil, satanic. The talk of power imbalances becomes “damned nonsense,” to invoke C.S. Lewis’s use of the term, when the whole of that day is considered. One side snuck in under the cover of holiday and celebration and religious observance to kill, rape, and kidnap. Then they reveled in it. When a man holds a gun on a hostage, who has the power? Who has the power when a man holds down a woman and breaks her body? Who has the power when the home country of the violated is lambasted and handcuffed by those freedom-wielding denigrators for their response? It is Hamas, and more so, it is the self-loathing subsect of the West who has the power them.
I am thankful for nuance. I will sit around the table with my wife’s family today and I will eat the food her mother prepared for us. It will be unlike my side of the family and their Thanksgiving meals. My family is loud, the core of us all having abrasiveness as our chief characteristic. My family agrees with one another on most things and still manages to reach a fever pitch of borderline hostility. There are black sheep, and any one of us has perceived ourselves as much. We may well be like the flock that Jacob took from his father-in-law. By I have taken something else from my in-laws. They are not a quiet bunch, by any stretch, but the smallness of the gathering lends itself to humanity and fun. They stay long, unlike my family. They eat before eating and then play games after. In both houses, there must be a consideration of the conversation. The black sheep of my own name know that our passion goes before the ideas and the blustering beliefs. In the family I married into, the desire to be together precedes all else. In the family I make for myself, I hope there is all that passion and abrasion, and I hope we want to be together. This is nuance in action. The holding of several things simultaneously, the consideration of degrees of truth in moral assertions. In my family, nuance has been the chief takeaway of the Thanksgiving table.
I am not thankful for the lack of nuance in the public discourse. Nowhere is this more evident than in the recent months. I am not thankful for self-deception, either, and that seems to be part and parcel of the anti-Israel message. It is not nuanced to chant slogans and proclaim the martyrdom of terrorists. Pointing out civilian casualties and settlements in places that are debated may well be important parts of the discussion, but only if you can hold two things at once. If you are willing to point out that civilians have been slaughtered in that land that shall not be named, that the land that will not be named has had those people that will not be named on and in it for much of history, then nuance demands we discuss the plight of Palestinians. If you can admit that Arabs have lived and worked in Israel, and that the Arab population of Gaza has exploded despite the bloviators’ cries that Israel wants genocide, only then you can hold that Israel has not always been a bastion of decency. If you can acknowledge Hamas’ genocidal mandate and refusal to provide for a path toward a two state solution, then you are permitted to cry out about Israel’s complete military superiority. And I may have objections for your doing so, like the fact that it is human nature to become bigger and stronger than the guy who wants to beat you up (see all Disney movies), or the incongruity between the ideas that Israel is a genocidal regime that has complete military superiority and the explosion of the Gazan population. And you might respond by pointing out that American and more broadly Western influence keeps Israel from fulfilling its true wishes, to which I would ask if you didn’t also think America was a colonial empire with the same kind of impulses, and you may respond that two colonial powers do not a perfect alliance make. And that discussion between us would be, blessedly, nuanced. We would then likely have a second helping of my mother’s world famous mac and cheese. After the cursory nap time, we would laugh over a puzzle we are taking too seriously.
I am thankful for moral clarity, though I am not sure where it came from. It hasn’t always been this way. I haven’t always seen the path forward, and I certainly don’t have it all in hand. I think what I mean is that the things I am clear about, I am very clear about. And thanks be to God, because one day, soon, I will have a child. And I don’t know what a child grows to be if her mother and father aren’t sure on at least some things. If there is nothing to impart, she, the child, must walk alone after her parents are gone.
I am not thankful for the relativism that permeates our world and our schools and our lives, forcing us to pretend some things are good when they are not.
I am thankful for words. I love hearing them from friends and my wife and my family. I am thankful for reading them and seeing them come alive off the page. It is my greatest commodity, my hope in knowing and being known.
I am not thankful for the way words lose their meaning when you say them too much, or about things that are not real. Words like “power” and “justice” and “violence.” When the meaning is in front of us, we struggle to see it for what it is and what it is not. I must remember to teach my kid the words.
The truth is, I am thankful for so much more than I am not. My wife. And my job. And the rest of my family. And books. And Texas. And writing. And accomplishing things and boxing and hot water and black coffee and the sounds of crisp mornings and the smell of salt air. The way America meets you halfway. And God, stooping low to give me things to be thankful for. And Clementines.
What’s more, I am thankful for having things not to be thankful for. A wise man once told me that the only proper response to a challenge or difficulty is “Good.” So it is. Every one of these things I view as either an existential threat or a severe crack in the foundation of our society. And yet, it is good. Good that the folks who still have some fight and love and good conversation have something left to think about, to write about and teach their children.
That alone is something to be thankful for. The good fight.
“A wise man once told me that the only proper response to a challenge or difficulty is “Good.” So it is.”
--------------------
Thank you, Harmon. It is always a pleasure to read your work. It is a most difficult time in the world demanding we all meet this challenge. Thank you for reminding us what is important.
Staying on the side of “Good” is the only challenge worth meeting. If we must fight, we must only fight for “Good.” With that in mind, things would change.
The people who are fighting with such extreme violence and horrific aggression right now believe they are fighting for “good” and that any violence in pursuit of their definition of “good” is redeemable. What do you do when you’ve been fighting for so long that your hate allows you to distort your humanity and your moral fiber in pursuit of that hatred? You are no longer pursuing “Good”. You have forsaken Good in pursuit of Hate and your feelings of injustice and helplessness. How do you re-center and reclaim your moral fiber? Especially in the wake of such horrific violence. How do you reclaim “Good”?
I think the answer lies in families and the dynamics you describe that take place at the Thanksgiving table and gatherings once a year. It is a special holiday for so many reasons. All the different personalities and lifestyles and points of views converging at once by those who may see each other often and those who may only see each other occasionally. At the forefront of a good Thanksgiving gathering is gratitude, respect and the challenge of “Good” in the room. We rise to meet it, or we fail, or we land somewhere in between by the love that binds us. As we know from all our families no matter the make up, if the Love that binds us and the pursuit of Good breaks down, there is estrangement and can even be violence in the form of shunning and other behaviors. It starts here. With each of us. With each family. With each community and with each gathering. Wherever two or more meet, there I am among you. That resonance of Love (Being) and Good (Love in Action) must be upheld in every interaction with every living thing (human, animal, plant, mineral, cells...).
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your robust family and to all our families everyday. 💕