Every year, we at the Coalition on Human Needs like to consider what we’re thankful for when Thanksgiving rolls around.   

There’s no doubt, what we’re expecting to be up against come January inspires us with a number of emotions, and gratitude is not really so high on the list.

Except…to live our best lives, we need to grab onto the people, things, and ideas that give us gladness, that surprise us, take us out of ourselves, make us laugh, and remind us of what endures. 

How can we not be thankful for the chance to experience all that? 

So, here’s an idiosyncratic thanksgiving list:

• 7-Day-a-Week Advocates: Most weeks, CHN has its Wednesday Advocates’ Meeting. We sometimes send out email announcements starting “Hello, Wednesday Advocates” – but should always correct that. You are advocates every day, unflagging in your work to meet human needs. You share your expertise, are hungry to learn more to better carry out your mission, and pitch in to seize opportunities to make progress.
  We are grateful for you every single day. 

• Truth-tellers: Lying is apparently having a moment. But ultimately, predictions of better outcomes from shredding public health protections, raising tariffs or slashing taxes for the rich, mass deportations, or denying services to people who need them must bump up against what actually happens. The truth.  So let’s thank – and honor – journalists who tell us what happens and expose lies. Just a few examples: Glenn Kessler, the Fact Checker at the Washington Post; nonprofit news outlets that do investigative journalism like Pro Publica and Mother Jones, and public radio and television reporters.  It’s tougher and tougher to sustain this vital work – we’d better be grateful for it and support it.   

• The Seventh Generation Principle: On a holiday that needs us to think of indigenous people, we are thankful for the wisdom of the Seventh Generation Principle as espoused by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (the Iroquois people) and others. That is, we must think of the impact of our words and actions to the seventh generation after us, and to remember back to the seventh generation that came before.   

• Art:  Every kind – music, fine arts, architecture, literature, film, drama, dance, craft. Let us be thankful for the opportunity to marvel at greatness or attempts to achieve it.  And let us be thankful for the pleasure of distraction. It doesn’t all have to live forever, but art reminds us that human beings are capable of amazing things. (Yes, greatness in sports too.  We did say this is an idiosyncratic list, right?) 

• You can still laugh. And you’d better. We are thankful for the democratic power of laughter – from The Emperor’s New Clothes to Groucho Marx’s timeless puncturing of the pompous: “I have nothing but respect for you and very little of that either.”* Everybody knows, if you try to analyze humor, you take the laugh right out of it. Let’s definitely not do that. But we are grateful for Jon Stewart and his Daily Show colleagues, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, and plenty of others who give us this gift. And don’t forget to be grateful for wondrous silliness and open-hearted laughter – go find Robin Williams on YouTube. 

• Greatness of spirit: We are indebted to Dan Barry of The New York Times for a moving article about historian Harold Holzer’s reading of the Gettysburg Address at Gettysburg, where Mr. Lincoln’s 272-word commemoration was delivered 161 years ago. Mr. Holzer was moved to see 16 people take the oath of citizenship as part of the annual celebration. As recounted by Barry, Mr. Holzer addressed these new citizens before delivering Lincoln’s address: 

“No matter what words you may have heard or will hear — words that may seem tumultuous, or angry, or even hurtful — this is the voice of America.”

Lincoln’s concluding words:

“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” 

We wish you rest, happy times with family and friends, and many reasons for thanksgiving. 

*If you Google this Groucho Marx quote, you’ll find it worded a little differently. I’ve heard it in one of the Marx Brothers films (don’t remember which), and remember it as I’ve written it here.  I may be wrong, but that’s what I remember, and I think it’s funnier. Anybody know which movie it’s from? The Google searches don’t cite their source.