The Thanksgiving blog

Another Thanksgiving come and gone.

Thanksgiving has been my favorite holiday for the sole reason that it's the day that my family, immediate and some of the extended, come together from all over to celebrate our love for each other (the food isn't half bad, either). And as everyone has grown, this includes other loved ones and significant others, which only makes it all the more fantastic.

I'm open-minded and very open to many states of minds and peoples' personal decisions. Yet when someone tells me they don't need anyone in their life to be happy, I will call it bullshit. I have yet to meet a person that is utterly isolated and solitary that is truly happy. Throughout my life, and during this time in particular, I've come to realize how important it is to have a 'home base' -- a place, or a group of people, that is always safe and loving. Despite how far you get from home, or how far you wander from your path, or how many obstacles you put yourself through to 'toughen up', there's always that place to return to for brief reprieves.

And yet, during this period of personal
wandering and exploration, it is different. While I've had such a wonderful time with my siblings, parents and cousins, aunts and uncles, friends and adopted significant others, it's a time of change. Some people were physically absent: a cousin in Ecuador, another, a recently converted Jehovah's Witness, unable to come to celebrate the holiday. It's so strange to feel vacant when surrounded by others, though. I feel so much love and adoration and would give an enormous amount in a heartbeat for the sake of any of their happiness. I laugh and screw around and enjoy myself around all of them. And still, there's that wandering aspect that hovers beneath the surface, that portion of myself that longs to be completely alone and completely surrounded: completely complete.

My point: Know and love yourself in solitude, and know and love yourself within love for others. Both aspects are incredibly important, and crucial for a well-rounded (whatever well-rounded actually means) ability to love.

The world is going to hell on its current path. Terrorists are blowing up kids that are in meditation retreats in India, and people that are in places of worship of their god. The pharmaceutical entity has grown to a grotesque stature that has, until now, never been witnessed in the history of the world, and controls more than we know. Politicians are mistrusted and are, more often than not, corrupt, rather than being a representative of necessity. People have forgotten how to use their bodies, and have let them go to fast-food convenience and stagnation; how to use their minds, and sell hours of their time to pixels; how to use language, resorting instead to "ur"s and "wtf"s via the internet or texting instead of looking someone straight in the eye and speaking clearly and eloquently; so many people have forgotten how to connect to other people except in a fashion that is self-serving, and self-destructive.

It's depressing and terribly frightening when you think about it as a whole. And honestly, as much as I'd like people to change, it's not my place nor my desire to dictate how people ought to live. So long as an individual is free to makes their own choices, and those choices don't harm others, I consider it to be a lovely thing. All I can hope to do is live my own life in such a way that I contribute to beneficial and what I feel to be necessary change. I hope to live my life fully; I hope to drink every experience down and become all the more filled for it. There are always the lovely little moments. Let me sample each and every opportunity, let me tread everywhere and anywhere. And even as I wander in uncomfortable, trying terrain, I sincerely hope I maintain the clarity of mind to draw wisdom and fulfillment out of this portion of the journey, as well.

Love to everyone, I extend my very best to you as you go about your day.