There are some universal concepts that all the world's great religions hold in common. Personally, I don't believe their origin is divine, but instead, is the result of centuries of human experience. They are a sort of "best practices" of humanity.
One such example is of the healing power of forgiveness. Counterintuitively, the greatest boon of forgiveness is not to the transgressor, but to the transgressed. Anger, resentment and hostility are cancerous to the human spirit. Forgiveness allows a person to rid themselves of these destructive emotions.
The very fact that the benefits are counterintuitive is the reason why these messages need to be carried by religion. Most people gravitate towards the obvious and the self-serving. However, religion can serve a function of reminding us that not everything in life is based on the feelings and perceptions that are most readily at hand.
Another example, appropriate to the season, is that most great world religions embrace the idea that we should be thankful for our blessings. The human condition is one where we disdain our discomforts and difficulties, and embrace our progress and blessings. However, the human condition is also one where our discomforts and difficulties are always manifest. Our progress and blessings? They are easy to take for granted and to overlook.
This is true to a far greater degree in the United States than in many other cultures. Vast swaths of the world have societies where their trials and tribulations are accepted as normal and inevitable facets of life. The US has never been such a society. If we don't like it, we change it. If we like it, we do what it takes to get more of it.
We are not a people who accept our difficulties with resignation. We fight. It is this desire to constantly make our world a better place that defines our greatness as a nation and as a people.
It also, to a great degree, makes us a people who are puzzlingly unhappy. Our natural state of being is one of dissatisfaction.
I am certainly no exception. As I go into this Thanksgiving season, I look back on a very, very difficult year. It had bright spots to be certain. My son is always a source of joy and pride. However, it was a very hard year for me in virtually every other regard.
One need only open a newspaper or turn on the TV news to know that this is a difficult time for many.
The reasons to be unhappy are many. We have a corrupt government that exists only to serve the interests of the monied. The little guy has been taking it on the chin harder than at any other time in my lifetime. The rising tide that was supposed to raise all ships is raising only the biggest and most expensive. Those of us in more modest craft are being swamped and are lucky to stay afloat.
Worst of all, the trend is towards more of the same, with virtually no chance that the tide will turn the other way any time soon. Millions of hopeful voters brought in the Obama administration in '08, only to see the Obama administration is absolutely corrupt, in equal measure to the Bush administration that preceeded it. There was zero change. There isn't any realistic cause for hope.
Like many small business owners, I am in the fight of my life. This time last year, I had 14 full-time employees. I am now down to 5. 9 good people who worked hard every day and wanted nothing more than a day's work for a day's pay are now unemployed. I bear that guilt every day because I just wasn't smart enough to find a way to keep it from happening.
In hindsight, I should have let them go sooner. Trouble is, I didn't have the benefit of hindsight as I made the decisions I made. I don't mind so much for me. My finances are a total wreck, but I can always find a way to get by.
However, I'm grappling with the reality that when everything is said and done, I may not have anything to pass to my son. I still have time to try and rebuild, and with any luck, I will get on my feet again, enough to afford to send him to the school of his choice when the time comes. In the mean time, though, I'm not in a very good place, and there's no guarantee things will improve next year.
So, there's a lot I'm unhappy with right now. However, it doesn't benefit a person to concentrate only on lifes difficulties. I'm also very blessed. I have much to be Thankful for.
I believe an optimistic outlook serves a person well. That a person is more prosperous, happy and healthy when they can go through life looking on the bright side of things.
The reality is that many things in life can be viewed either positively or negatively. It just depends on what you want to do.
For instance, Wall Street's relentless drive to crush the little guy and stack the deck ever further in Wall Street's favor is driven by it's belief that their glass is 3% empty, not 97% full.
In my life, so many of the things I saw as burdens were, if looked at from a different perspective, actually positives in their own way.
So, during this season of thanks, I'll go ahead and spell out the things I'm thankful for. I can count my blessings by the fact that the things I am thankful for encompass almost the entirety of my life.
First and foremost, I'm thankful for my son. I think most parents want to raise kids to be better people than they are. In this case, I have no doubt that this is true. My son is a wonderful, compassionate, athletic, bright, honest and principled young man. I can't think of a single aspect of my boy that I'm not proud of. He has been a blessing from the day he was born to today. I look forward to watching him grow and prosper.
That part is easy. There's no downside, there. There's no need for perspective to be thankful for Logan. He is, without a doubt, my life's greatest joy.
Next, I'm thankful for my business. My business has been the source of most of my difficulties these past 12 months. However, I have a lot of cause for optimism going forward. True, the business is smaller than I'd like, but we have retained almost all the capital equipment that was a constraint on our growth in the early years. We're well-poised to be highly profitable in 2011, even if 2011 is as disastrous as 2010 was. The employees who remain are amazing. I thank my lucky stars every day that they're willing to work for me.
Yeah, this past year has been brutal, but I own a business that did half a million dollars last year. How many people do you know who wish they had that? During a time when small and large businesses are going out right and left, I'm still left standing. So long as the doors are open, I have a shot.
Compared to most Americans, I have great prospects because I own this business. Contrast to most people in the world, and I'm insanely wealthy. So, yeah, my business has been a source of vexation of late. However, it's got every chance to do well in the coming years. There's a lot more upside potential than downside at this point.
I'm thankful for my house. I bought a fixer upper, and it pretty much has played out as a worst-case scenario in terms of its condition. The thing just wasn't in very good shape. I bought it because the view out the back is absolutely heavenly. I also bought it because of proximity to Tessa's house. Logan can walk back and forth between the two houses, easily.
Anybody who ever bought a fixer upper can tell you that doing so is a soul-robbing experience. It's never the best-case scenario. You never really know how good or bad your house is until you start tearing the walls open. Most people get to live in blissful ignorance. If you renovate, though, the realties are laid bare.
At this point, my house still looks like a construction zone, but the walls and ceilings almost all have been repaired, now. They've been modernized with knock-down texture and painted neutral colors. I have all new windows on the second floor. New exterior doors throughout. I had some structural problems that caused one room to slope and the roofline to tilt, but that's all been fixed, now.
If I get to where I have a little money, I'll build a bonus room over the garage. It has a flat-roof and is the source of all the problems that developed over the years. However, that project can wait a year or two.
Once the shell is all taken care of, I can devote attention to the inside. There are a lot of projects there, too. I want hardwood throughout. The bathrooms and kitchen need to be remodelled. It will take years. When it's done, though, this will be a beautiful house. That, by the way, is the battle-cry of all poor souls who own a fixer upper: one day, this house will be beautiful.
Thing is, it's easy to see how it will happen and every passing day, my house gets nicer. It's still a wreck, but it's taking shape. I actually enjoy being in it, now. If I can make this sort of progress every year on the place, it shouldn't be that long until it's actually a home I can be proud of.
I'm thankful that I live in this country. Yes, I think our politicians are corrupt at worst, and inept at best. Yes, I think our society increasingly exists to put the little guy under Wall Street's boot heel.
Yes, I think our various levels of government kick small business owners in the teeth every chance they get. Yes, I think that the business environment is so anti-small business and so pro-Wall Street that it's entirely feasible that my business, like so many others, may go bankrupt in the not too distant future.
Despite all that, I can rebuild my life and my fortunes. I can do that because of the opportunities that are only really present here, in the United States. If I have to, I can build myself back up from nothing as a 50 year old failure. The politicans and Wall Street have destroyed a lot of America, but enough of America still exists that I can't imagine another place where I'd be as likely to succeed.
I'm thankful for Logan's mom, Tessa. We married a decade ago. Things haven't worked out so well between us. A lot is just basic incompatibility. I bear my share, or more, of the blame for the way things have gone.
When you marry somebody, you chose a partner for the duration of the marriage. However, once you have a child with a person, no matter what, your lives are intertwined forever.
In this way, the very things that made her an attractive spouse make her a phenomenal mother to my boy. She is beautiful, hard-working and intelligent. We share all the same values. Half of what Logan is is because of his mother. It is impossible to be grateful for how fantastic he is, without also being grateful for how fantastic she is.
All in all, it could have turned out better. Yet, despite everything, it could have turned out much, much worse and the reality is that things have turned out really well. Despite the fact that we are going our separate ways, we will continue to raise Logan together for the next decade or so. She's as good a partner in this endeavor as I could have hoped for.
I'm thankful for my father. For the first 3 decades of my life, that's something I doubt I would have said. We have a relationship that would have been described, at best, as being strained. He is a person who has made himself into a better person over time. These days, my relationship to him is something very valuable and important to me. He has been there for me in ways I never would have dreamed of in times past.
My relationship with him is one that best illustrates that people can change for the better and that it does not profit a person to harbor a grudge.
As a final note, I'm thankful for all my friends. I haven't always been as good a friend in return as I should have, but as time goes by, I place greater and greater value on the relationships in my life.
All in all, I wish 2010 had gone better. I hope 2011 goes much better. In the end, though, I'm thankful for my life and have every belief that things are good and on an upward arc. Hope the same is true for all of you.
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