[827] Thanky, Gimme

One of the chief complaints my mom had about us as children was that we were spoiled. (Because we raised ourselves and bought fancy things? #projecting) I forget the circumstances, but one time when we had pissed her off, in a rage, she demanded that from that day forward we were going to have to declare something we were thankful for every day. My stomach immediately sunk. I didn’t really understand the task, and in the same sort of way that you know you’re going to fail a test in school, I had no idea how I was going to figure out a way to answer every day with something that wasn’t going to get me beaten. Luckily, it was bluster, and after the night of our egregious offense, she forgot or didn’t bother with pressing our duty the next day. On this day literally named for thanks, I offer my most visceral memory associated with the term.

Older, wiser, it’s a lot easier to conceive of “thankfulness.” I could parse it down to incredibly specific and small things or sweeping conceptions I enjoy working with. I know what it’s like to experience the highs and lows, and I know the real work that goes into giving you the kind of grounding to realize the infinite amount of pieces that go into you being able to function in the world. My fingers work in my healthy-ish body as I type this on my one of several computer devices. I’m full of food, and just beyond those walls are people who would look out for me in shitty situations. I have an important job which affords me the opportunity to dream and plan as though I’m going to live until tomorrow and the next several years. I have redundancies and failsafes and insurance. I have leisure and an opinion about things that suggest a certain class. I’ve had access to inspiring ideas that provoke my creative impulse.

My intensity regarding what I’m thankful for has certainly dampened. I recall listening to Cassadee Pope say how different jumping up and down at 30 is from when they were doing it on tour at 21. “Life” as a holistic concept is a conservative force. It’s not asking you to build a shelter anymore grand than nabs you a mate. It’s not begging you to feed the homeless, make millions, or respect the balance of your microbiome. The haphazard organization of your social and emotional life, if not almost perfectly arbitrary, is a blueprint shaped by a bygone era and fundamental gamble mitigated only in conscious decision. You can get fat, do what you’re told, and use normative language and “win.”

My family, for all of its petty in-fighting, telegraphs that conservative pulse. We manage to throw together an array of food, talk of sports, movies, and the detailed descriptions of Chicago travel directions to rival an SNL skit. Through a baseline of “up, work, home, TV, bed” trips get taken, bills stay paid, and no one seriously believes we won’t be able to manage some way, somehow. The network that is my family has its own baseline and expectation I think most middle-class and above families do. You can waste as many years and words in hatred in the “in-between,” as long as if shit gets real you rush to the chance to reclaim your place and purpose while you build ever-more resentment that you had to be bothered. (One shudders to think what my family world would look like if my dad and step-mom hadn’t been my grandma’s primary caregivers.)

I find that as long as I don’t expect things from my family, I can get along well enough like I would at any table of “regular folk.” At this point, “thankful” becomes a complicated subject. I can’t say I’ve ever had too strong a conception of what family was supposed to mean, but if I were to guess, trust would be a kind of ground-floor component. Can I trust them? Here I return to an answer that I use for most people I entertain in life. I trust them to “be who they are.” This is a life-affirming respect when you conceive of someone as an individual. On the other end, it’s a forlorn shug you might offer about a humping dog who’s gotta hump. They might be significantly better than nothing in a proper crisis, but in that conservative tradition, they’re not going to partner with you to head-off said crisis.

I try my best to reduce this sentiment to a dispositional more than personal grievance. My concept of what I have empowers and enables me to want to explore and grow. Because I’m thankful for how the knowledge of how hard it can be, there’s a fair degree of things I can “suck up” that I get a series of confused and pitying looks from others when I speak about. (Namely my living conditions.) I understand the rule of “have more space, you’ll fill it up” and “have more money, the more you’ll spend” so I look for ways to utilize the space I occupy and resources I acquire that will build the intangible. What does it mean to argue against a culture so many are perfectly contented to? What does it mean to try and mold the abstract that is thought into future taken-for-granted gains? It means you’re perpetually alone and very confusing to all the people who wonder why you’re not happy to have a family, movies, and ability to describe the layout of a major city street by street. We’ve survived fascism much worse than Trump, they’ll say.

I understand conservatism in a way I don’t respect. It’s the thing already there independent of examination. No matter how far and away a “lefist” or hippie you might be, you’ll respect and desperately require the organization and oversight in clean water and traffic laws. The same can be said about a great many things. The task is to maintain a respect for what it takes to keep that basic structure in place and then take on further responsibility to shape higher orders of organization. If you’re fat and happy, you should consider doing something more to slim down and find something worthy of worrying about.

That’s my insufferable persistent push and ask. For the countless times I’ve been told something positive or affirming about me, what can that truly amount to if I were playing this life game “correctly?” What does it mean if people like me, presumably that cohort in college I was all crazy about, organized around those higher order principles? What if you had people who signed on to addressing the foreseeable crisis in a way the world at-large can barely conceive of or recognize when they arise? Is it a job for the Illuminati, the politicians, or pseudo-benevolent technocrats and billionaires? For the amount of times I raise the prospect to my incredibly small circle of influence, I’m lucky to find 1 in 100 that will entertain the conversation, let alone consider the plan of action. I’ve watched for years while we wait for the next viral star to save us or placate with eyebleach and feel-good videos.

To be sure, there are many organizations trying *something* to “fix things.” None of this is to pretend that I have the sole, or even that great of an understanding or grasp, of how *everything* should run or be organized. But I can retain the awareness for what’s missing. I can crave a spirit of accountability and engagement I can’t find. I can watch as people avert their eyes when presented the opportunity to bet more for a reward that can’t exist without sufficient sacrifice. I can watch people emptily envy me when I profess how far in advance I seek to pay my bills or how I manage to see and do things “on a social worker’s budget,” so ill-conceived. There is no age I believe I’m supposed to get to where all the bluster I’ve exhibited in blogs is supposed to reduce to barely cooling my brow as I waste away on a beach cliche.

So how thankful are you? Is it enough to affirm and strive for more than your place at a familiar table? Is it enough to see what every day can really bring and worth suffering the feeling for what more you think you could do? Are you thankful that you have the mind and body that can do a shocking amount relative to the conservative mean or next to someone missing one or a dozen of your gifts? I didn’t need to get a job where I routinely surround myself with poor people to recognize it in myself. I didn’t need to hear the tired stories and excuses of those who always have someone else to blame. My mom dropped the “thankful” game because she wasn’t, and still isn’t, accountable. My family bites off its nose to spite its face because it can’t focus or organize around not just what’s gone so well, but what could be with goodwill and thanks for the memories. I hope to emulate or design a way of living where every ounce of thanks you can squeeze from yourself translates into the greater cultural immune system, because mine’s operating in a fashion so many more deserve as well.