Blog
Thanksgiving
9th Dec 2010 in Personal
British people are polite. We say please and thank-you and get very uptight when other people don’t say please and thank-you. I have visited eight countries in the past few years, and the only place where people were more polite than me was Japan (+1 manner skills to me). So I strut around, thinking that I really appreciate it when other people hold doors for me or give me presents or drop my name, thinking that I always send thank-you cards and tidy up after myself, thinking I’m just so bloody nice. But when do I ever stop to give thanks for the bigger things? For my life and the way I get to live it?
Brits say thank-you, but we don’t give thanks. I don’t just mean that we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving (which, as far as I can tell, is something to do with families and turkeys and land-stealing and making peace or something); I mean that we just don’t stop to appreciate.
Because I love my life. I seriously fucking love it. I love waking up in the morning and I love getting into bed at night. I love my girlfriend and my family and my friends, I love my internship and my teaching job, I love my writing and my lit mag editing and my book reviewing. I even love my horrible, malformed novel draft.
I love the days when I don’t have to get up early, and I can just laze around drinking tea and reading books. I love the days when I get up pre-dawn to catch a train to another city for my internship, and I get to spend an hour watching the fields roll past and sipping coffee slowly so that the caffeine seeps into my veins. I love the work I do, and I love the work I don’t have to do.
It won’t last forever. Eventually I’ll want kids, and a bigger house, and a car, and shelves full of shiny things; and that means A Real Job. Real Jobs don’t let you read in bed all day or have three-hour lunches or decide not to do something just because it looks boring. Writing takes time, and A Real Job won’t give me time.
But that’s okay. It’s all okay. Because I’m happy, every day I am happy and content and excited and in love. Every day I am striving for more more more, but I am happy doing it.
This is cheesy and sentimental. I know it is. But just for one wee blog post, I want to stop complaining and questioning and struggling and feeling sorry for myself. And here it is. Tomorrow I’ll be back to the bitching and swearing, but for today I want to give thanks for this life that I have. So to everyone in my life who makes it what it is: thank you.
We’re Canadian, and while not as polite as you Brits, as a colony we’re the next best thing – apologetic, and we’re truly sorry about that.
Happiness is a wonderful thing, and it’s infectious. You’re happy, and blogging about being happy, and that bit of open and honest happiness rubs off on others. I’m a little bit happier myself just for reading. Hope that’s ok, sorry if it’s not.
Best,
:Steve
This was absolutely beautiful. Happiness is meant to be shared. I know that this post has already made my day more lovely.
Thanks, Mercedes!
Stephen, I’m so glad that the post cheered you up. I think we get so used to being cynical and ironic that sometimes we forget to appreciate the good things.
Don’t ever get a Real Job. Seriously. I had one for a decade and it almost killed me. Shiny things on shelves date faster than ever. The £500 iPod I bought eight years ago holds fewer songs than a new £10 Asda’s own-brand does now.
The bigger house needs more maintenance which means more money which means you can never get round to leaving the Real Job to give yourself time to think and breathe and be who you are, the Real You, the You who lives deep within the husk which shuffles around performing the corporate bullshit which pays for your next new iPod.
You have everything. Even better, you realise it. There’s no need to compromise anything. The happiness you have really can last forever.
Oh – and what you wrote was the most delightful thing I’ve read all week.
Thank you for sharing your happiness. It’s catching. And I agree with Alex. Don’t get a Real Job unless you have to.
Beautiful. You go, Kirsty.
Another Canadian here… we’re polite too, but not so apologetic since the Olympics … great post …. keep ’em coming.. I bumped into you at Hope Clark’s newsletter … so, you networked like an author at your eighth Birth Day party …. Phew, you started early 😀