I am the Thanksgiving day cook in my family. I prepared the turkey, stuffing, and giblet gravy as usual. We always go over to my mother-in-law’s house, and this year there was expected to be more folks than normal of the extended family. I got a big turkey this year, and the meat was falling off the bone and tender. Everyone loved it, so much so that my wife’s cousin, a young man in college, took a sizeable portion home with him to keep himself going over the next week.
Thankfully there was no political discussion, although someone did try to get it started, I will not name names, but no one wanted to bite. It was a little more subdued than in past years. I did have an interesting scientific conversation with my youngest daughter who is a biology graduate, now pursuing a master’s degree. My eldest is in Georgia, and living her best life as well, making a living as a twitch gamer with 50,000 subs. My mom spent it with my sister and her family back East, and my brother was with his family out West.
I’m not going to say things are perfect - they’re not. But, there’s plenty of time to deal with that in the days to come. Instead, let me tell you about some of the things I am grateful for right now.
I’m grateful that my daughters can take care of themselves, and don’t have to depend on their parents - us - to keep them going. They are both smart and resilient, and growing stronger every day. They are both way smarter than I was at their age.
I’m grateful for my wife, who has supported me over the years, and allowed me to pursue my crazy dream of writing recently. She is also a wonderful collaborator on my creative writing side, and I value her more than she knows.
I’m grateful to be alive in this time in history. I witnessed humans landing on the moon in 1969 when I was 5 years old. I’ve been a tiny part of the personal computing and network era, and helped build systems that were behind the smart phone. In 1924 Edwin Hubble determined that the Andromeda nebula was really another galaxy - like our own Milkyway galaxy - exactly 100 years ago. When I was born, physicist Arno Penzias and radio astronomer Robert Wilson discovered the cosmic background radiation that signaled the Big Bang. In my lifetime, we’ve gone from that meager understanding, to an understanding of the size and shape of the universe, the fact it is expanding, there are other stars with planets orbiting them, and that there are more galaxies than there are people in the world - all of this understanding in the short span of a single human life, and all thanks to computers, networks, and aerospace technology, and the efforts of thousands of scientists the world over.
I'm grateful to be a human, and not a slime mold, or a rock. This is a gift I think too many people take for granted. We have the ability to not only percieve the universe in all its wonder, but also to make sense of it, and using that knowledge can make things better for everyone. You don’t have to be religious to understand the value this brings not only to your own life, but potentialy to those who’s lives you touch. We are one of the few things in the universe that can press against the coming darkness of entropy by giving meaning and creating order out of chaos in the time we have, rather than being simply pulled along inexorably. This is why I know about Edwin Hubble’s contributions to astronomy even after his passing before I was born.
I am finally grateful to all of the people who are resisting the evil in this world. They are the smart ones. They are the people thinking long term, who understand this wonderous gift we’ve been given is only viable if we can preserve this small speck in the cosmos we are all dependent on. The people who *think* they are smart, the rich technocrats, and oligarchs, who insist on short term profits and corporate welfare, haven’t a clue other than the game they are playing at the expense of all the rest of us.
So I wish you well this Thanksgiving. I hope you can reflect peacefully on what you are grateful for, and gain energy to manifest your world, and a world we can all enjoy together.
