All my love to the people and experiences that have shaped me, particularly in the past year. I thank Allah for all of the people who I have had the great fortune to brush against in my short life on this earth, whether as friends and family or as those who have touched my life just for an instant. Perhaps I'm getting sentimental, but I feel all of your radiance lifting me up as I continue every day to seek out who I am and who I want to be. Let's carry those intentions far past this one afternoon, celebrating with our food and our thanks, as we continue to brush past each other and shape one another in even our smallest of actions.
Showing posts with label thanksgiving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thanksgiving. Show all posts
On Gratitude: 4 Ways to Bring it Into Everyday Life
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Happy Thanksgiving!
Now that you've getting a hefty dose of tryptophan and starches in your diet (and more than a small serving of my counternarrative argument from yesterday's post), I want to introduce some levity into the idea of Thanksgiving.
I think it's a great holiday because it highlights - however strangely - the need for community and the need for gratitude in the American way of life. Gratitude and being thankful can often be overlooked or overshadowed as we go about wielding our extreme individualism and slaying the demon of time management. In our culture, gratitude often only makes a holiday appearance, but today I want to tell you how you can carry it into the rest of your year. Here are some ideas:
Now that you've getting a hefty dose of tryptophan and starches in your diet (and more than a small serving of my counternarrative argument from yesterday's post), I want to introduce some levity into the idea of Thanksgiving.
I think it's a great holiday because it highlights - however strangely - the need for community and the need for gratitude in the American way of life. Gratitude and being thankful can often be overlooked or overshadowed as we go about wielding our extreme individualism and slaying the demon of time management. In our culture, gratitude often only makes a holiday appearance, but today I want to tell you how you can carry it into the rest of your year. Here are some ideas:
Counternarrative: Thanksgiving Edition
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Thanksgiving is a day to eat. Thanksgiving is a day to spend time with family and friends - and to eat. To overeat, even. To express the bounty of our labor in as grandiose a way as possible.
No matter how many times we are told that Thanksgiving has a different and deeper meaning, these are the images we return to in our advertising of Thanksgiving and its aftermath, Black Friday. There is - as with all US holidays - an inherent layer of consumerism that pervades all the nice feelings that we might think about the holiday itself. There is also a glossing over of the people who are less privileged on Thanksgiving and the Native Americans who were actively displaced historically, though they are linked to this holiday.
Today I want to draw attention to these points. Before we make merry, we have to think critically about the choices we make in regards to our cultural celebrations. We are making active choices to participate in the culture, whether it seems like it or not, and that has to be explored. Thus, I am proud to introduce the first edition of Counternarrative: Thanksgiving.
*By the way, I am not a Thanksgiving hater, no matter how this post may make it seem. I just want to provide some context and thoughts on the ideas that are implicit in our participation in the holiday. As you were.
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