Editorial: It’s getting harder to be thankful
We seem to have forgotten how to give thanks. It’s not about what’s on the table or even who is around it. And it’s certainly not about what is on sale today.
Thanks and giving are two things we should embrace every day – not just the fourth Thursday in November.
We seem to have become a society more of takers than givers. We keep what’s ours and don’t share. And we begrudge those who can’t provide for themselves.
Sometimes it’s a struggle to be thankful when you don’t know where the rent or the mortgage payment is going to come from, or if any meal, let alone a well-balanced one, will be on the table, or if that threadbare jacket will survive one more winter. Thanksgiving can seem like an afterthought.
It’s hard to be thankful when the basic necessities of life – food, shelter, clothing – are hard to come by.
Sometimes it’s a struggle to be thankful when we get used to abundance – the full table, the overflowing shopping bags – we expect it – having forgotten to be thankful for what we have.
Ironically, some of the biggest givers are those without abundance.
While economists say we are out of the recession, ask your neighbor if that’s true. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent this year in the greater Lake Tahoe area on public and private infrastructure improvements. Ask around how many locals were working those jobs. So many in the basin work for the government – steady employment with outstanding benefits. The other spectrum is minimum wage jobs filled with uncertainty and decreasing benefits.
Ours is not a robust economy. The chasm between the haves and have nots is growing. Middle class – it hardly exists in the basin and is diminishing elsewhere as well. This group is on the fringe, barely hanging on – one step from qualifying for aid, one step from losing their home, one step from being a have not.
But perhaps for today we can find some common ground to be thankful for. Take a look outside. Something brought you to Lake Tahoe or keeps you here. Those mountains, that lake. We are lucky and should be thankful to live in such an incredibly beautiful place.
While nature’s beauty will not solve our problems, it can lead us to a place of happiness. From there, perhaps we begin to look at things with less despair. Perhaps we reach out to our neighbors and break bread together, or just say hello or wave for a change. It won’t get the bills paid or put food in our stomachs, but social scientists say attitude is a huge contributor to how things can affect us.
There is no better day than Thanksgiving to take a look around and be grateful for what you do have. Don’t think about what you don’t have. And take another moment to share with someone why you are thankful they are in your life. It might require picking up the phone, sending an email or text, or even writing a note to that person.
It’s time we all give a little more thanks.
Happy Thanksgiving from Lake Tahoe News!
I take issue with you on many things but I think you are on the mark here.
When in High school I had a job as a roofer assistant and we worked for lots of people. The Mayor’s house even, mainly rich people that could afford this contractor. When it was super hot we took on painting jobs and we did two back to back.
One was the Mayor’s the other was the poorest job of all in the poorest area that we ever worked, a house in the flood zone, an older woman, and hands down the nicest and most generous.
She brought out a case of soda for us. A case. Said hello to us, offered the restroom. No other client ever offered anything other than an occasional water. The mayor I recall was the nastiest of them all.
That was 40 years ago.
The whole experience was very influential on me. I recall she was a proud woman, owned a small business and it was her rental property we were working on, right next door to her own house which she was going to paint herself. She owned her own business and was proud and friendly, the “salt of the earth” type of person.
Following that, and I am not saying it was related, I went on to work with hundreds of small business owners. Often times I found similar types of people, really serious about their community and their employees. But that changed over time.
That was a nice memory you stirred, thank you. And thank you for allowing me to say my piece on your pages. I know i have angered you. I know also that you try hard to be balanced.
This might sound odd but I think Tahoe could hold the key to turning America around. It is our crown jewell after all. But today I see it as the antithesis of the American Dream. Dominated by an over reaching government that has cronified the community and creates barriers to free enterprise and all the benefits that come with it.
Happy Thanksgiving.
I’m thankful I have a job to go to today.
Thoughtful editorial, thanks.
Some focused contemporary writing today. Thanks for getting my brain to evaluate the situation(hopefully in a more realistic manner).
Happy Thanksgiving, Kae, to you and yours.
I am thankful for Lake Tahoe News and all the articles that are presented everyday. It is the first thing I read every morning.
Sure make you think.
My Grandfather always carried a business card that had a saying on the back.
“I had no shoes and complained … until I met a man with no feet.”
No matter how bad things are, no matter how bad off we each are, there is always someone else that is worse.
I am thankful for learning these lessons early in life, for having family and friends to share today with. Yet also for being able to live in Tahoe.
Happy Thanksgiving
Well said Kae. Hopefully I will remember your words tomorrow. Have a Happy Thanksgiving.
Well said, perhaps its time to relook at our entire political set up. As we have lost statue as the number one nation in the world we perhaps should rethink our role especially in relation to our responsibilities to our citizens. We seem to have no problem spending billions on defense, or to build infrastructure in foreign lands, yet we want to cut food stamps to feed our own. We build schools in foreign countries and let our own decay. We do not have to become isolationist, just readjust to the modern world. There are economies that equal or even surpass our own yet we continue to thinks like world war two just ended. We should join in cooperation, not foot the entire bill. Our own constitution perhaps could stand a reevaluation given that times have changed so dramatically. And, what about those old and worn notions like work ethic, and have we forgotten that a governments job is to serve its people, thus while ever industry has strong lobbies the poor have virtually none and are forced to depend on the charity of their fellow citizens. We build fences to keep Mexicans out, while not noticing that the Mexican economy is growing at a rate twice our own, I wonder what role those fences will play when Americans are moving to Mexico to find work? The point is times have changed, we have not, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the middle class is disappearing. Happy Thanks giving everyone.
Hi Kae. Thanks for the reminder on how and why to put a little more gratitude in our lives. Happy Thanksgiving to you too!
Well said. Thank you.