A Thanksgiving Thank You

The holiday season is upon us and being the manic depressive that I am, I find myself with typically conflicting thoughts. It seems to me that the whole country is sort of manic depressive in a way. The extremes are getting more extreme. I’m sure that right now there are people drinking toasts to their decadent excesses, feeling no guilt, while other people are feeling as if they are in a hole miles deep because they know their standard of living has dropped and shows no sign of a quick rebound.

It has always been this way in America and maybe it always will be. But if my less than glamorous existence is emblematic of America, then the way I am dealing with it is no less indicative of the resilience of the American spirit. I push on every day. I face personal crises on a daily basis and my soul bleeds likes a festering wound but I remain optimistic. What else can any of us do?

It is sad that the socially maladjusted minority regularly grabs the spotlight of the mainstream media. It is equally sad that many other people find these fringe dwellers with a perverse need for attention so fascinating. The ones who are ignored in all of this are the citizens who plod along on a daily basis and raise their children uneventfully, instilling them with a sense of values and dignity. This doesn’t make the newsreel highlights, and there is always talk of changing values and the erosion of the family, but certain things remain constant, and that still is and always will be the backbone of this manic depressive nation.

So this editorial is a shout to you, the ignored, the decent, the stressed and the children who are struggling to understand their existence while the world shifts beneath their feet. As John Lennon sang forty years ago, love is the answer. I know that to include such a cliché in an editorial is a literary sin but the truth of that statement will resonate through every generation. No matter what your situation, if there is love, there is hope. And I think the people of this country whose lifestyle has been so cruelly and abruptly disrupted realize that. They are the collective force for good that hold this country together against an ugly tide of corruption and greed. If we are to restore our simple sense of morality, untainted by manic depressive extremism, then those people will be our ultimate salvation and I want to thank them for it in advance, and let them know that their efforts do not go unrecognized, no matter whether the mainstream media pays any attention to them. I see examples of it every day, in the way a mother and child look at each other as they hold hands on the street. In the way a gentleman with twenty items in his shopping cart lets me go ahead of him because I only have three items. In the way that someone I don’t know compliments my singing in the church choir on Sunday. These simple gestures say so much about who we are as a society. I pray that we never reach the point where that kind of civility goes out of style. Thank you, and I hope everyone enjoys their turkey and football with a sense of moderation and civility.