Regardless of my mixed feelings towards Thanksgiving as a holiday, there’s one tradition I can appreciate: literally giving thanks.
My family always said grace before meals growing up, but since it was so tied up in religion and thanking God, I struggled with the tradition as I entered adolescence and started questioning my religious beliefs. I stopped saying grace as a form of protest (much to the disappointment of my parents) and eventually stopped being grateful for things like food, clothing, and shelter altogether. Because here’s the thing about being grateful: it’s all too easy to stop.
We’re constantly bombarded with messages that we’re not good enough or that we need more to prove that we’re as good as (if not better than) people around us. We need more things, better things, all the time. There’s never too much. There’s not even “enough.” Only more.
Over the last few years, I’ve been slowly making my way back to being a more grateful person. I don’t think this was an outright goal of becoming zero waste, but going zero waste has made me a more grateful person. When you’re aware of the energy, time, and resources it takes to make everything in your day-to-day life and the effect you have on the world around you, you stop taking things for granted. When you start connecting yourself to the work of creation–farming, cooking, sewing, childbirth–you stop taking things for granted.
I’m still not an overtly religious person. However, I’ve been trying to incorporate more grace into my daily life: I am thankful before I eat, when I wake up, when I go to sleep. I am thankful for the time I have with my loved ones and I am thankful for my health. So while I’m not necessarily thankful for Thanksgiving, I am thankful for grace. For those small moments we take to see the big picture and where we fit into it. For those moments where we can be thankful.