Thankful

a vocab word that makes me uncomfortable.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: As I am beginning the holiday family chaotic shenaniganry this week and into the next few, I thought I’d repost this ‘mess’ay from a couple years ago on the current holiday we celebrate at this time each year in this country. But! Since I wrote this back in 2023, I thought it’d be fun if I annotated it with additions and commentary as I get the impulse. Sound cool? Cool. Here ‘tis: the ‘mess’ay is as it was originally, and all footnotes will be current day commentary.

Is the cornucopia a universal symbol for thanks and bounty, or is that just an American/Thanksgiving holiday thing? 

I wasn’t able to get past the paywall on this one but I am fascinated by this concept, put forth in The Intrinsic Perspective:

“...whatever things you specifically are thankful for are, they are mostly an outcome of biology plus math. For we humans have been blessed by evolution with a long lifespan. This, in turn, means that our lives intersect with the mathematics of chaos.” 

I feel like I have way more of a choice than this, Sapolsky be darned. But I do see a sort of plague of thankfulness expectations¹ (particularly around the holidays), and it has always rubbed me wrong. Let me explain.

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One Christmas, when I was a young teenager, I received a wooden jewelry box as a gift from an uncle-by-marriage I’d never met. It was pretty, in an understated way, with a butterfly carved into the lid. I expressed aloud how pretty I thought it was, then considered; with its large size and the fact that I had three others, I didn’t know if I could use it. I shared the back room of the trailer we four lived in (parents, me, sibling), with my little brother after all, and the trailer’s tiny bathroom certainly had no room for it, as all four of us shared that. 

I got screamed at for ten minutes straight after saying so. How dare I not express gratitude; didn’t I know my uncle had carved that lid himself (I didn’t); I should be thankful. I don’t even deserve it, but I should be thankful for it. The yelling went on and so I retreated from the living room floor under the Christmas tree into my half of that back room in the trailer, until things cooled down a bit. Later, I meekly said thank you and then had to keep the box. I said nothing else about it, ever again. I don’t remember where I ended up finding room for it—maybe I got rid of something else to make way. I was thankful for the gift, and it wasn’t my fault I didn’t want it. That sounds funny, huh? But it’s true. 

What’s my point in telling you this? What’s my thesis? It’s basically this: I’m uncomfortable with gratitude. Actually it’s not that—it’s more that I hate being forced into a performative show of it. I don’t like being forced into gratitude, because that’s a gift that shouldn’t be given lightly, or falsely.

Thank You Sir, May I Have Another

I stayed in an exploitative adjunct professor job for more than 20 years. Actually, I still am working as such, though I’ve taken more control of my situation and am not taking abuse to the same degree anymore.² Why did I stay in this job that long, taking this terrible treatment with thanks? A few different reasons: the main way academia keeps us here in these dire conditions is a series of false promises of advancement,³ and also a cult-like smothering blanket of two-faced gratitude. We’re taught to scrabble and covet even the rottenest scraps, and thank our administration for administering them. 

Exploitative situations like this make bank on those of us who ‘love’ our jobs, and if we’ve been abused personally, it’s so easy to hook us in and keep us subservient in gratitude: I have a job as a professor, after all. It’s a privilege. I should be thankful.

Should I?

Should I feel gratitude for a tiny wage I can’t live on? For no health insurance? For being blamed for the state of education today? How come?* 

I mean, I am. But also, not. I’m both. Both very thankful and also absolutely not. And why can’t this be possible? I finally stopped thanking one university for screwing me over, quit offering my backbends for their abuse, and it was so shocking to them that I quit.⁴ How dare I say ‘fuck you’ instead of ‘thank you’? It’s the refrain of the abused: others have it worse, I should take this and be grateful. Or: I have all I deserve, maybe even more than that. How dare I ask for more?

The theatre world does this to its workers, too: I should be thankful, for anything, any role, any attention at all (including unwanted attention from those in power). How dare I demand more? How audacious am I, for asking for what my work is worth? Going on strike? How rude. I should be grateful for being allowed to do this at all.

*Should I quit complaining and ‘just get another job’? Okay, sure. What job? As a 50 year old woman with 22 years academic job experience,⁵ where am I going to be hired? As a server/bartender? With no experience and bad knees? That’s a competitive field where I live (and rightly so); there’s no way I’d get hired even by friends. In a corporate entry level position? At my age? Not bloody likely. Do I go back to school, get into punishing debt again, for a business degree? Don’t make me laugh. 

Please Sir, I Want Some More

The narrative given to marginalized people about gratitude is: be thankful for what you have. Don’t get me wrong—I am indeed very thankful for what I have. I feel true gratitude every day for the hard work done in this household, for the roof over my head, for the warm bed from which I’m writing this right now,⁶ for the coffee at my side, for many of the things I get to do. But. Being grateful shouldn’t replace any form of ambition or of working to make things better, or even the fleeting thought that I might deserve a little more. It’s a mindset of: make do, instead of make better. I want to do both.

Sure I’m thankful for what I have, but can’t I also want more? Don’t I deserve that? Why is that greedy? I’m both thankful and absolutely not. And that’s possible. And perfectly okay. Let’s not let ourselves get complacent.⁷ Greed isn’t good, but neither is gratitude, necessarily.

When gratitude is a platitude, it’s a stunting (or an oppression?)—a stopping of action. We can be both thankful and not. Being both things allows growth, as much as it also makes space for appreciation, acknowledging privilege, doing better, and moving forward.

Cornucopiclusion

I want to end on a sincere note: I don’t feel, as you may have gleaned from my rantings above, that passive platitudes are worthy of my emotional energy. But an active tally of those things I do value without guilt or shame? That’s worth a list. First, the humans: 

• My partner, with his intellect, strength, and love languages. Also his limericks, music, and comics. His brain and smoky voice.⁸

• Two stepgoblins, who are blooming into such wonderful men as I watch, astonished.

• Those Dime Pieces: the amazing artists involved in Blue Dime Cabaret, including the safe queer space of DV8 distillery & our noisemaking audiences. The Triumverate of Bella, Brandy, and Max,⁹ and all the spectacular talents I get to cast and enjoy each month.

• Nicole, Bri, Ethan, Kaylie, Sierra, Erik (and Lindsay) at the true 3rd-Place warmth that is IC Brewhouse. A comfort zone and a social home.¹⁰

• I can’t choose who my parents are, but I can choose to be thankful for some of the ways they’ve parented me through the years, and the ways they are in the world now. I don’t have to be thankful for all of it, but those parts I thank them for are true, important, and from the heart, not just lip-service ‘cause they’re family. That’s real.¹¹

• My lovely students and kind boss at DU. They do as well by me as they can, and I appreciate it.

• And!! Youse guys! All you people who read my stuff (I shall name no names because I *will* forget someone). Consider yourself saluted.

And here’s some life situations I’m thankful for (a la Nadia Bolz-Weber’s bit on bad attitude and good gratitude):

• Living with these 3 wonderful men: two very young,¹² one navigating middle age alongside me. That’s kind of about the humans again, but ehh. I’m doubly thankful for their presence in my life, so. 

• My health (such as it is) and changing hormones. Why am I thankful for this? Because any coming of (any) age is a grand thing, for which I am thankful.

• Food & drink. Specifically?: cheese, wine, patê, whiskey, good beer, my partner’s homecooked love meals, onion chips across the street,¹³ my mother-in-law’s beignets, the espresso vodka at DV8 that I sip onstage,¹⁴ the coffee that my love brings to my nightstand every morning.

Image yoinked from OpenArt. This reminds me of the Ghost of Christmas Present.

1. I feel like this is connected to the insidious concept of toxic positivity, that Ehrenreich did so well in her book Bright-Sided.

2. Still true. Though we’ll see how long this remaining adjuncting job lasts, as classes continue to get cut.

3. This is why my memoir is called Next Time, and I discuss this concept frequently throughout it.

4. Find this story in the Prologue and Epilogue of my memoir: ‘Monday at the Meeting’ and ‘Great Escape.’

5. Almost 53, more than 25.

6. The comfy couch on which I’m annotating it, and the devices on which I’m working and watching things.

7. Especially today, as things continue to unravel daily and hourly and minutely…

8. Our now-marriage, which we enjoy every day.

9. It’s no longer DV8, it’s Odde’s Lounge. And Max will soon be leaving us for a new life in California.

10. Bri is the only one left from this list at that 3rd Place. And it’s now called CV. But others are there now too, and CV is still a good place to go for an unwinding pint or a working sesh.

11. I’ve never believed that one is obligated to love someone just because they’re related. And I spent too long trying to conjure up love for a person that never earned it; I don’t waste it anymore.

12. One of these is actually living all the way across the country at Penn State now.

13. They don’t have these anymore, but their garlic cheese curds are awesome, and they have fish & chips now.

14. I sip the following onstage at Odde’s: Bulleit Rye, or an old-fashioned, or a tall boy of Two-Hearted IPA (which I also enjoy when visiting my other in-laws in Michigan).