What Does It Mean To ‘Give Thanks’?

Before I launch into the subject of this post, a brief aside: when I started writing this blog, it was my intention that it would tackle the hard questions in life; the real, existential mind-fucks that occasionally keep even the best of us up at night. I’m afraid I’ve been a little lacking over the past few months. Real life has gotten in the way. Most of my recent posts have been somewhat work-focused. Hopefully that will change soon… Which brings me to the topic of this post: what does it mean to ‘giving thanks’? How do we interpret a holiday that is, on a superficial level, nothing more than excuse to sit down and eat a big meal with the family?

Since the end of September I’ve been turning a couple of ideas around in my head – like some irascible puzzle pieces I have to fit together – trying to figure out a way to get back to the concerns that I originally wanted to discuss. I thought that Thanksgiving would provide a great excuse to do this.

I’ve just started a Masters program here in London, Ontario, after a two year hiatus. I guess you could say I’m re-connecting with my philosophical roots, which will probably have an effect on the tone of the conversation. Whether that’s a bad thing or a good thing probably depends on the person. But this blog was never intended as an academic outlet, and my plan is to (hopefully) keep these posts accessible to anyone who might stumble across them. Since you (anonymous Internet reader) are the final judge of that, I’d welcome any comments/constructive criticism. I hope you’ll get something out of reading this.

***

For those of you who don’t know, Thanksgiving in Canada occurs on the second Monday in October (last weekend). I went home for the typical, glutinous turkey-fest with my large extended family. Then I was shipped back to London with a care package of leftover pumpkin pie. This disappeared pretty quickly. It was my second trip back to Guelph this fall, and one of the things I am most thankful for is this renewed proximity to friends and family. After being away for most of the past two years, I’ve started to miss them.

My first visit to Guelph was to attend the memorial service for my great-grandmother, who passed away in the spring. She would’ve been 98 this September. It was a cold Friday afternoon, the second weekend in September, when we commemorated her passing. We were about twenty to thirty people (including a cellist), crammed into my grandmother’s tiny living room. My uncle and my cousin had flown into town for the ceremony, other people wrote instead, sending emails or letters with their memories of Bimbetta, my bisnonna.

I will not share the sometimes-scandalous details of these stories. Suffice to say, my great-grandmother was a woman of the world; a complex character, at times both strict and mischievous; and a seasoned traveler. I have included one story as an audio file, as it was told by someone else – I won’t try to sum it up because I can’t do it justice, but it’s something like The Vinyl Café meets Out of Africa. It is one of those stories that manages to be both funny and touching at the same time – perhaps by grace of the circumstances under which it is told. It is called “Mrs. McVeagh and the Bodysnatchers” and I hope you’ll all enjoy it as much as I did…

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/172933015?secret_token=s-8cMWX” params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]

Looking back, I feel like there’s something almost deifying about memorial services; the closest we ever come to immortality. If only we were all as fortunate as Tom Sawyer, lurking in the rafters. But there was no rafter-lurking for my great-grandmother. Standing there and listening to the stories, seeing the displays of emotion, I couldn’t help glancing up every now and then – from my position beneath the skylight – to wonder if her merry soul was watching.

I am not religious, but it is my firm belief that there is some form of existence after death; an enfolding within the loving embrace of the universe. When we remembered her – a plurality of individuals coming together on a Friday afternoon in early September – our pooled recollections almost seemed to make her unfold from the cosmic dust once again: bringing her back into the realm of actuality; making her return to life, for a few hours.

Her story – and the other stories that were told about her – make me think of the importance of ‘having fun’, allowing a little playfulness to slip into our daily routine. I’ve always been a bit of a serious kid, especially when it comes to the things I care about. As I get older, I find it more and more important to balance this seriousness with moments of playfulness (usually in the form of bad puns). But what does this have to do with ‘giving thanks’?

There are a million things to be thankful for in life. They’re probably subtly different for everyone, but if you ask a stranger on the street, the response is likely to be some variation of: “I’m thankful for my friends and family”; “I’m thankful for my health”; “I’m thankful for my cat soulmate”, etc. I am undoubtedly thankful for my friends and family. There’s a reason this is the clichéd response: it rings true. However, I wanted to connect this stereotype to something more specific, more immediate for me: this playfulness that I have been taught to indulge – not just by my great-grandmother – but by many of the people in my life.

Now, I could finish this post with some kind of robust, philosophical portrait of the concept of playfulness and its relationship to ‘giving thanks’, but there are certain things that only get farther away when you talk about them directly… From as mundane as tweaking the animations in a Powerpoint presentation; greeting the cashier at the corner store with a bad quip about the weather; spamming your friend’s Facebook wall with pictures of chinchillas; deciding that the dairy aisle of No Frills is the appropriate place for some impromptu beat-boxing; practicing your best swing dance moves in a half-deserted subway car on the Bloor line; doing half-naked yoga in the middle of a hostel dorm, playfulness is all around us as a part of life. You just have to remember to give thanks, and the rest follows…

Thanks for reading! 😉