Not Another Thanksgiving Day Message !

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." -Maya Angelou

Before we get to the table for a belly-blast this weekend, we are grudgingly face-to-face with the challenge of gratitude all month long. For most of the year we can duck and dodge the pressures of thankfulness, and most people do - openly admitting to having a difficult time accepting compliments, much less the larger implication of being truly loved.

So, why all this muss and fuss? Why do we have such a hard time receiving people's affection, admiration and sincere love? Why don't we hear their knocking as a joyous visitor but rather a rude intruder? Why do we, when asked, pretend to be so perfectly happy with our lives?

We live in a Prozac land, a world in which putting one another down is considered funny, reprimanding children's spirited relationship with life is normal and the resulting wide spread depression is written off as biochemical. Maybe no one wants to be reminded of their own human frailty so we not only ignore raspberries and other signs in our fellow mortals but grow allergic ourselves to receiving someone's praise.

Even as people the world over feel morally justified in engaging in aggressive and morally questionable behavior when they think that there is no other option and the divorce rate keeps exposing how difficult it is to be loved and loving, it is time for each of us to take a long and hard look at the mirror and to recognize, respect and value our unique gifts and talents. Not as an exercise in narcissism, but as an exercise in receiving and then experiencing and expressing sincere gratitude. But then, notice, we will have to give up our cloaks of indifference we so fiercely defend, our false modesty and most of all, Gestalt depression that protects us from being truly alive.

And say, if each person can realize no one on earth can be like them...that no other soul may know the beauty, sorrow, light and darkness they alone are given to see….that fairy tales are true, not because they tell us dragons exist but that dragons can be beaten, then we will really be the person who meets life no longer with the pretense we already know what it's all about that keeps us from acknowledging what we are all about. Life then is a dance floor and not armies banging on each other’s wall, getting through each other...

When we receive and feel this gratitude towards life itself, we want the whole world to feel the same way. We surrender our isolation. We reach back to embrace the one who graced us with their spiritual generosity and gracefully accept another's positive recognition of who we are. So, why wait for someone else to do it when we can do so ourselves (and do it better than anyone else)? Why not, this Thanksgiving, instead of smiling for the sake of smiling, go ahead and give ourselves another reason to smile?

Last Chance, Fancy Pants.

Rock on 80s VH1 Flashback style!