Happy Thanksgiving!

To all the Unschool's American reader-writers

Photo by Prchi Palwe on Unsplash

Last year, my first here, I rather lazily re-posted my Canadian Thanksgiving message. It wasn’t “lazy” to my mind; I felt it was worth repeating. But this year, I feel a need to do something else.

Our Canadian holiday happens the second Monday in October, and I was sick with a head-cold and called it off. Two weeks later, my family gathered at the table. The bonus was that all three partners of my boys were there with no other familial obligation, no choice to make. We celebrated, we were grateful. It’s not so much about a single date on the calendar.

Gratitude is an antidote to the madness all around. (Not just ‘out there,’ but closer, at times just outside of our inside, too.) The challenge is to remember to cultivate daily time for ways to actively acknowledge, and for deliberate inaction, too—to find the emotional and mental space for this.

My best work happens when I am slowed, when my brain calms. I re-learned this last week when I was pushing too hard. I was grateful for all the hours I had, away from home, to do some particularly tough re-writing and cutting. But the focused state I entered into exhausted me, and I’m still recovering. It is easy to underestimate the ways of the mind. As a practicing artist, I have to feed both the creating process and the stillness, and am always gauging the inter-workings. I think that if I’d been more grateful for the time, the week, and understood that gift, I might not have asked so much of it.

I’m—slowly—working on a post about images. This photo made me think of all the hours I spent walking with my boys when they were young. We would go to the local bird sanctuary, and walk the forested paths. We’d hunker down in one of many bird-blinds and go silent and watch nest-building. We’d count the sandhill cranes standing in water. In winter, if there was ice on the ponds, we’d make a special trip out to see the ducks come in for landing and skate on their breasts across the pond. Like curling rocks! We would purchase bags of seed, and scatter. One of my boys, in thanksgiving mode, would open his bag, and turn it upside down, letting the seeds go in one swoosh with a shout of “party-time!” and then feel the hungry duck bills poking at his feet.

So many hours of movement and joy with inner stillness growing. I would go home from those times, energized to write.

What is it in your life that feeds you? And reminds you to feel that life is good?

We don’t do quite the decorations here in Canada that I observed last week in San Diego. There, every room in a home we visited had some reminder. (Even a seasonal shower curtain!) Out of doors there were lights and brightly-coloured blow-up nylon turkeys on front lawns.

Maybe when you put all of it away, leave one reminder on your desk. Maybe not the turkey. But a candle from the table, or a photo of the day and your child. Or a rock you picked up on a walk. Some piece that, when you see, your response is a breathed Thank you.

If you look for it, even the rocks smile.

Happy Thanksgiving, Writers!