intellectual properties

what i am thankful for

re: the last post, although i contend that i find meaningful ways to celebrate and recognize the christmas holiday, because i’m generally against gifts and cutting down trees and decorating my house, many people think i’m a grinch.

i have also in the past fasted on Thanksgiving as a way of being thankful for food, and also as a protest against, again, over-consumption as well as colonialism and revisionist American history.  and while i recognize that those pilgrims were simply giving thanks for a bountiful harvest, i also sympathize with the Native Americans who see it as a celebration of genocide, and find the whole eat-unhealthy-food-until-you’re-sick-and-then-lay-around-watching-television tradition to be rather symbolic of all that is WRONG with America, not all that’s right. (but that’s what we’re doing today anyway! haha!)

and i realize that this attitude, these beliefs, seem either a) pretentious, b) self-righteous, or c) spiteful to some people, particularly people in my family, and i wish i could find a way to frame my point of view without seeming that way.  but I AM GRATEFUL. i am.  i have my own ways of celebrating the world, and recognizing the beauty and joys of life, and giving back, and giving thanks.  they just aren’t traditional, as the traditions don’t resonate with me.

this thanksgiving, I AM THANKFUL FOR:

my family, whom i miss more and more every day, including the ones who i argue online with , and the one thing i do really miss about celebrating the holidays is seeing my family

jay, who is my partner and the only person who understands me, most of the time, except when we’re fighting about stupid things.  but i am extremely grateful we only really fight about stupid things, and not the big things. <3

my good health, which i become more and more grateful for every day, as i have been increasingly experiencing the signs of aging and I AM NOT HAPPY ABOUT IT but i am still grateful to have had 33+ years of above average good health (knockamilliontimesonwood)

my friends, near and far, who continue to inspire me and make me laugh and show me the world through their eyes, from Alaska to Moscow, Santiago to Berlin — a world without friends is no world at all.

my job and my coworkers, who are earnest and believe in making the world a better place

and finally, again despite my objections and criticisms and wishing-things-were-different, this holiday i realize how thankful and grateful i am for America, and to be an American.  despite all the problems here in the U.S.,  despite all the fighting and corruption, i am constantly reminded when reading the world news every day that i was blessed to be born here, with the rights and privileges of U.S. citizenship, and not somewhere else, and that even though we have diverging viewpoints on how to achieve them, most americans have the same interests at heart, and there is solidarity in that.  this is also why i find it so difficult to remain quiet – to not say how i feel about politics or economics or democracy, why i can’t “let it slide” when someone makes a racist remark or a sexist slur or tries to justify keeping rights and privileges from one group while giving it to another – because passive democracy is not a democracy.  Passivism is not how America was born, and if it continues to be the cultural norm, how America will fail.  i know i get on my soapbox every now and again, but it is in defense of these things i am thankful for about America.  in an age of censorship, corporate media and misinformation, i am grateful that if we want it, we all have a voice.

and now, we are on our way north toward dinner.

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