Can Thanksgiving Save Us?

I’m not a big follower of celebrities, including actors and actresses. I admire their talent but otherwise don’t pay much attention to what they say or do, especially if it has to do with something other than show business.

So I haven’t paid much attention to Michael J. Fox, 59, who became famous for his major roles in the Back to the Future trilogy of films and the Family Ties television series.

But I must admit he’s pretty impressive, having overcome hardships that would be a huge challenge for anybody. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at age 29. Then in 2018 he learned he had a tumor on his spine that required a risky surgery. The surgery was successful but he had to relearn to walk. 

A review of his new book, “No Time like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality,” appeared recently in USA Today. It details the devastating fall he took shortly after the surgery that left him with a broken arm and on the threshold of despair.

Nothing but Pain and Regret

“I was lying on the floor in my kitchen with a shattered arm waiting for the ambulance to show up,” he told the writer. “I kind of went, ‘What an idiot. All this time you’ve been telling everybody to be optimistic, chin-up, and you’re miserable now. There’s nothing but pain and regret. There’s no way to put a shine on this.

“That was a real breakthrough moment for me, because I realized that I’ve been selling that optimism to people for so long,’ he continues. ‘I believe it’s true to my core, but it struck me that at that point I questioned it, and I questioned it really severely.

“And so the rest of the book is this journey through finding my way back through gratitude. And I think gratitude is what makes optimism sustainable.”

Thanksgiving, with a lower case T, is what he’s talking about. And it’s what I’m attempting to address in this blog – not the wonderful holiday we share every year at this time – but the attitude that has the potential to “save” us, as individuals and as a society, and especially as people searching for God.

Make Our Lives Happier

What do I mean by “save?” I mean that gratitude can save us from our worst selves, make our lives happier and bring us closer to God.

Gratitude literally covers a multitude of sins, in my view. It requires humility (which in a sense is honesty), understanding that little of what makes us who we are and what we have has come solely through our own effort.

The idea of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” may be an appealing slogan for many Americans, but the truth is, we’re not all starting out at the same place. And it would be hard to find someone who hasn’t had a lot of help in that “pull.”

Now, when many of us are experiencing a strange Thanksgiving Day, apart from our families because of the pandemic, it’s a good time to reflect on our sense of gratitude and whether we give it enough importance. Most of us probably don’t.

The Ten Lepers

And that inadequacy is not new in human history. The gospel of Luke tells the story of Jesus curing 10 lepers, whom he told afterward to “go show yourselves to the priests.” They were “cleansed” of their disease en route but only one of them, a scorned Samaritan, returned to thank Jesus.

“Were not ten cleansed?” he asked. “Where are the nine?”

So once we have a sense of gratitude, where do we direct it? Obviously, toward the people who have helped us or loved us. But what about gratitude for that greatest of gifts, the gift of life? Some like to say they’re grateful to “the universe;” others to “the cosmos;” and others leave it vague.

People sincerely searching for God have a target for our enduring sense of gratitude, and in my view, an expression of gratitude should always be included in our prayers. God may not need it, but we do.