Thanksgiving? Let’s Try It!

If one ever needed evidence that American culture has fully enshrined the idea that things are the primary route to happiness and its corollary, “there are never enough things,” we need only to cast our weary eyes over the shopping stampedes and bestial behavior that is replacing the traditional Thanksgiving holiday.

While some folks seem upset that stores now open on Thanksgiving day itself, this was bound to happen in a culture where the “not enough” reigns supreme; where Mammon is the one true God. The fact that many of these stores use indentured, low paid workers and rob them of their Thanksgiving time with family, or self, is beside the point; a distraction.

The responsibility for the loss of this once quiet holiday, and its conversion into another mindless shopping day, rests not with the merchandisers, but with the patrons.  For many of us, sadly, shopping, buying and getting clearly have more value than the traditional one day per year focused on gratitude, reflection or time with family. The stores are simply pandering to and enabling the addiction to shopping, not creating it. Drug dealers can’t exist without users. Shopping for deals during Thanksgiving is like “crack” for shoppers. Pity the user.

The irony of all of this is that it is thanks giving itself that actually brings happiness. The joy that results from ongoing gratitude is a joy that Mammon can’t possibly produce for more than a fleeting moment and, like the smell of a new car, the joy of obtaining some new object soon fades away (note to shoppers: not to worry, you can now buy “new car smell” in a spray can). Many spiritual paths teach that gratitude, practiced daily, is the very source of happiness itself.  Unfortunately, you can’t eat your cake and have it too.  Gratitude and the continual desire for more are completely incompatible and cannot coexist in the same organism, no matter how hard one tries to make it so. In other words, it is hard being grateful for what you have when you are preoccupied with what you don’t have.

Apparently, one day per year dedicated to “thanks” giving was one day too much for the shopping herd. But now, let us let these sad folks go their weary way, shopping until death itself finally parts them from ever beckoning aisles filled with deals, ever ignorant of the true path to lasting happiness. Let us wish them well,  with the hope that they will awaken some day from the illusion and the dream that is daily spread before them by screen, billboard, and radio in ever waves of advertising.

As for you, dear reader, may you find every opportunity to be grateful every day from morning until dusk and, as a result, find yourself filled with the ever flowing wonder of life along with the true joy and happiness your gratitude practice will naturally bring with it!