November 28, 2007
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It Could Be Worse
Over this last holiday weekend you probably heard a lot of people talking about all the things they are grateful for. They probably spoke of how grateful they were for health and family and food and friends and so on and so forth. I’m sure it was all very pleasant and enjoyable to hear and you probably too felt that sense of gratefulness for being in this place at this time enjoying their company.
But not to rain on everyone’s parade but I have just had this feeling that has been bothering me for a long time about the kinds of self-indulgent praise that gets battered about on Thanksgiving Day. I hate the tenor and the tone of this kind of gratefulness. It makes me very uncomfortable. I hate listening to it. I don’t want to join in and say I’m grateful too. Because I’m not. Not really. At least not in the sense that everyone else seems to be speaking of.
When you put it all together you see it boils down to one idea, one basic principle upon which our gratefulness is consistently based. And that is this:
It could be worse.
That’s what people mean. When they talk about how grateful they are for their Thanksgiving feasts, the good food, and good company. What are they saying except that isn’t it just so great that we have these things when it could easily have been otherwise? Aren’t they just saying oh how good it is that we can splurge on turkey and ham and sweat potato pie when others elsewhere don’t have that luxury? It could easily have been us. We might be poor and destitute or just so strapped for cash that we can’t afford as much. It could be far worse.
And our family is here and alive and able to meet together and celebrate this thanksgiving feast when there are others, other families that are estranged from each other, and others who have lost all their loved ones or never had any to begin with. But we, we at least get to meet and eat and be merry. It could have been worse for us. It could have easily been that way for us. That’s why we are grateful on Thanksgiving. That’s why we give our thanks.
But here’s the thing that gets me. You know what? It can always be worse. For the poor and the destitute and lonely and lost are all probably celebrating their Thanksgivings too only they’re just thankful for a different lot of so called ‘blessings’. “At least I’m alive” or “At least I’m warm” or “At least I’m in full control of my mental faculties” might be the things they speak of their gratefulness for. And they turn around and think about the people so hocked up on drugs that they barely seem human, and the poor souls living in conditions of absolute squalor half way across the world, or the imprisoned who have to fight for every once of respect they can get, and the people stuck in the middle of a war zone ever living in terror of being raped or kidnapped or meeting a violent death for them and theirs. And you know these poor are just thinking, but for the grace of god go I. And they are grateful for that. Of course they’re grateful.
And yet guess what? The drug addicts are thinking about those poor souls who are stuck up in an insane asylum and don’t enjoy their freedom to get high. And the prisoners are thinking about those bastards on death row and have no future of any kind awaiting them. And the war zone dwellers no doubt have a passing thought about that guy they heard of who yeah got out of the war but only at the expense of losing two arms, two legs, his hearing and with brain damage. At least THAT’S not me. That’s what they think. Boy it could be worse.
And don’t you dare for a second think that that’s the worse that could be. We just open our minds to the possibilities and we can imagine worse and worse and worse without end. You could imagine someone who has lost all their senses, or someone paralyzed or someone whose memories are wasting away. And we don’t have to imagine these people. They really exist. Turn on the news and we hear about them. All the time. And it could be worse than that too. What if you had your senses and your wits but happened to be the most hated person in the world, known by all and reviled. All your friends and family have abandoned you, deemed you worse than worthless, an object of their scorn. And strangers look upon you with repulsion and hate you for all they’re worth and resolve to make your life a living hell. That could be too. It could easily come to pass.
And yet even then when thanksgiving comes along I’m sure you’ll have the passing thought that it could be worse. I could be Dead you might think and burning in eternal torment in a Hell designed just for me whilst still suffering the same hate and scorn from all around me whilst the devil each day imagines new torments to plague me. Or maybe I could be locked in the Earth, a living corpse, forced to live out every agonizing moment as my body decomposes into nothingness.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Think about it long enough, dwell upon it with enough heart and will and you can always find something. There’s always somebody whose lot in life just looks so much worse than yours that you can feel grateful in comparison. There’s always somebody you can pity. There’s always somebody you can look down upon and feel superior to, to feel pleased with yourself that through your luck and skill you’ve been able to make at least that much of a better life for yourself. And you think, Happy Thanksgiving to me! At least I’m not as bad off as those others losers!
That’s was annoys me about this holiday. That’s why I can’t ever really fully get into it. Whereas other holidays are sheerly commercial or sheerly religious or sheerly historical, thanksgiving is different, it’s about a principle, a value. The idea that you should take a moment and reflect upon the good things in your life and feel grateful for all that you have. Grateful because it could be otherwise. Grateful because it could be worse. That’s what Thanksgiving is. A celebration of it could be worse.
But to me thinking “It Could Be Worse” doesn’t make me happy. It doesn’t bring me any pleasure at all. I don’t feel that glow of content togetherness as we sit about our fine feast eating our excellent food thinking that all is right in the world because we aren’t so unlucky as to be one of the millions of people who have it far worse. And I don’t see the value of taking a moment to reflect on that. I want nothing to do with it. It makes me very uncomfortable.
This is also why I hate watching the news most of time. Most of the stories are terribly dark. Why? There’s as much good in the world as there is evil. Really. Just look around. But the news covers primarily the darkest, hardest, and the worst of all the worlds events. We are constantly subjected to stories about people suffering and hurting and dealing with hardships beyond our imagination. Or else stories of despicable acts that raise our ire.Why?
It’s simple really. There’s the demand. People want to watch and hear these stories. It makes them feel better. People can feel better about themselves by noting that it could be worse. Look at these poor fools who’ve got it much worse than I? Look at these idiots who can’t even get better than that for themselves? Look how screwed up everybdoy else is. It makes people feel better about how screwed up their own lives are. It makes it easier to take the hard times in their own future. They watch and say things like “What a shame! What’s the world coming to!” But they keep watching and inside a part of them is relieved to know that in the grand scheme of things maybe their problems aren’t that bad. It could be worse.
Even our “feel good” stories often have a tint of this superiority to them. Over the holiday I heard a ‘feel good story’ on the news about a family who had six kids at once. Now the obvious question to ask is, why is this news? Why do you care how many children another family has? Why would this make you feel good? The answer is dark but obvious. Because all those viewers are saying “Oh how cute” but inside they’re thinking “Phew. I’m so glad that’s not me!”
Am I too cynical? But I just hate this! We shouldn’t always be evaluating our lives against everybody else’s trying to justify how ‘good’ or how ‘bad’ a job we’ve done with it. We shouldn’t always be trying to see somebody else’s problems as a validation or an excuse for our own. Can’t we feel good about the good things in our lives non-comparatively? Can’t we acknowledge the bad in our lives without having the qualifying it with how it stands in relation to the bad in others lives?
I guess to me, it could be worse is just no reason to be grateful.
Comments (1)
great post…Jassmine has a post on a term called “voluntary simplicity”….
for so long, this is how I too have felt about the need for people to have their emotional content given back to them for some neurotic induced security issue that they are “feeling” things right…at work, people have stopped asking me how are you doing? because I answer them, honestly in the moment…and all they wanted to hear was “how ya doin” back..but this is how we have cheapened sold short human interaction..much like love, you know when someone says to you “I love you” what they really wanted is to hear someone say that back to them…and then some “wise” person would create a justification for this mundaity and say “you get what you give”…that, is not really even reciprocal, it is more regurgitative…now, for the synergy, be able to do for someone else without reciprocation, because you can, because you can increase and yet never have to say a word or draw notice…but most people aren’t being taught altruism, they are being taught co-dependency and that is why so many people off themselves on the holidays, they are addicts to others’ interactions, even false and when they are alone, they are without any internal hope whatsoever…it has become too forced and too fake and I really like this post..