Thankfulness & Gratitude
#46 - Chewin' on ideas before tomorrow's big meal
“Thanksgiving is a time of togetherness and gratitude.”
— Nigel Hamilton
Happy Early Thanksgiving, my dear fellow Hue-Mans. To you and your family, I extend my warmest gratitude during this sacred time of coming together.
With the full force of my heart, I thank you for your readership and support of The Hue-Man Experience.
Your involvement in this project has made it a Top Philosophy Publication on the Substack Leaderboard in our 1st Year, and I am excited to keep growing together into Year 2, this January.
Right now though, it’s time to work in the kitchen to get a big meal ready for tomorrow, and I thank you for spending some time with me while your turkey brines.
I am imagining your refrigerator is stuffed to its seams, and tomorrow when your oven finally cools down you'll spend time around the table in Celebration with those you love the most.
It's that time of year
The Holiday Season is not universally loved by all though, and it's understandable why. This time of year can be emotional for many different reasons.
You might be excited to eat with your family while someone else laments their first year being alone for the Holidays.
Now is an important moment to remember not a single other living hue-man is having the exact same experience in life you are having, and some are having a harder time dealing with theirs.
When you are at peace within yourself and you encounter others who are stuck living in a constant state of emergency, you can feel their struggle bubbling from their presence.
And since you understand what it takes to make peace from the darkness of the struggle mindset, you adorn the responsibility of sharing your peace in the most unobtrusive way possible.
To do this, you lead by example without steamrolling anyone else's free will. You remember it is not your job to be the enforcer of any type of thought. It is not your job to make people think anything.
It is your job to accept them how they are in order to fully appreciate the unique value they add to your life. To carry yourself with grace even when you feel others are wronging you with intent.
Since everyone else is living a different experience than you are, you don't know exactly why they think and act as they do. But you can still choose to love them despite whatever flaws you decide they have.
You know how the Holiday Trope goes...
Uncle Mike gets too drunk and goes on a dinner table rant which quickly sours the mood for you and the others. Emotions rise, shouting ensues, and let's just say old Uncle Mike will be dining elsewhere next year.
But just because he feels strongly about something you disagree with, does not mean you have to absorb his opinion as a threat to your identity and go to war.
Your job is not to defend your honor by forcing him to understand why your opinion is right and his is wrong.
If you are well enough to recognize your wild Uncle is vehemently speaking from ignorance, then you should also be capable of rising above the situation without a ding to your ego.
Even if you disagree with him, when you lead by example by listening to his opinions, you let him know he’s not alone by giving him the ability to release them to an audience outside the vacuum of his own mind.
You take away the option for him to play the victim who no one ever listens to when his internal narrator reviews what happened at dinner before going to bed.
When he attacks your viewpoint, you show him what it looks like to be in peaceful disagreement, rather than trying to tell him why he’s wrong for thinking the way he does.
This higher action will stick with him, and as he lays in bed he will think about how you went high when he went low. Good old Uncle Mike, just like you and me, evolves how he feels about life on his own terms when he is ready.
His opinions were shaped by his experience in life and have nothing to do with you, though it’s easy to forget that when his spit’s flyin’ onto your plate from across the table.
So as The Spirit moves through you and your family in different ways, remember your limited time with them to be sacred. Remember they are each meant to teach you something about yourself, and perhaps old Uncle Mike’s job is to teach you restraint.
An idea to snack on before dinner
Thankfulness and Gratitude are similar, but not the same.
Thankfulness is a fleeting emotion caused by external action. It can be replaced by another emotion which weighs more because its roots are shallow.
Gratitude is a long-term state deeply rooted in experience. Its mindset produces a way of being which does not sway with the wind.
You can be thankful Uncle Mike brought his signature cheesy potatoes to dinner, but the vibe is shot for everyone at the table the moment you verbally assault him over a trivial disagreement a few drinks later.
When your being is rooted in Gratitude, you simultaneously perceive the joy of Uncle Mike's freakishly good cooking, and the heavy emotion of his ignorant opinions as light and dark parts of who he is right now.
You also recognize he will evolve beyond his ignorance when he learns to observe his own behavior from a higher vantage point.
Give Uncle Mike his flowers no matter what he says this Thanksgiving, and watch how he quietly grows them all year long. Perhaps you might be the first person to ever actually listen to him. Perhaps he could then learn to listen as well.
This week's practice
Gratitude emerges from a place of knowing. Imagine the tree as a symbol which illustrates this.
When you're walking in the woods you feel peaceful, right? You feel calm and reflective?
Perhaps one layer of what you consciously feel on your walk is the infectious gratitude of the trees engulfing you.
The tree is grateful in its towering presence because it knows its roots dive deep into the dark Earth and will support it as it stretches up toward the Sun.
Because the tree knows its growth is supported, its gratitude rings through the woods and into your heart as you walk the trail.
Be like the tree this week.
Ring your rooted gratitude through each room you enter and watch it reverberate off the walls to illuminate each heart it touches.
Your actions make an impact on every hue-man you encounter. Will you leave them feeling better or worse than they did when you found them this week?
Happy Thanksgiving, xoxo
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Pssssst. Yeah I’m looking at you.
Still here, are ya? Well, if you like electronic music and playing with your sense of time, here’s a brand new mix from my musical alter ego. Enjoy.
Perfect timing for such wise thoughts.
It took me a long time to carry myself with grace, when interacting with "Uncle Mikes" on social media. My life is much more peaceful since I switched to giving compassionate replies to posts, instead of engaging in debates with those whose opinions differed from mine.
I love everything about this. The music at the end is excellent, too. I feel like I went through a warpy time tunnel of cosmic bliss and have been reborn!
This post is so timely and relevant to humanity--written with true love and wisdom. It’s a divine reminder to practice living with ego set aside. It gets easier the more we try!
We are more than the identity we built. Taking someone else’s views/words personally is a trap. It breeds hate of others and ultimately self, because everyone, including (and especially) Uncle Mike, is a reflection of us!
I’ve learned the gentle power of being present without judgement. People I talk to tend to open up and then something fun happens, a potential is born, that sweeps me into a current where thoughts, responses, words magically appear to build momentum towards some kind of perfect harmony, a deeper, more profound connection.
The real magic of connection happens when we’ve contemplated our way to the awareness of self and others as other-selves. They are us. We are them. Let go. Love that person in front of you. Receive the love that they offer.
Wishing you the best day, my man! Eat up and be merry. HTG!
Also, one more thing. A little truth is in every perspective. It’s up to us to connect our sense of truth with another’s. The trick is to realize that “hateful speech” or “ignorant ramblings” has truth in its core (truth about that person’s experience, about the nature of social dynamics, cultural paradoxes, etc.).
Connect to the truth in someone else, and all the baloney that encases it will fall away--you’ll see that person with new eyes and a full heart. Cheers!