© 2012 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. I’ve seen better days, but I’ve also seen worse. I don’t have everything that I want, but I do have all I need. I woke up with some aches and pains, but I woke up. My life may not be perfect but I am blessed. - From Lessons Learned in Life
The holiday for optimists is Thanksgiving. The most important part is to concentrate on the Thanks. I do give thanks that my friends and relatives are still alive, though this last year lost several. I am thankful for all who are still here.
My father’s favorite holiday was Thanksgiving and once he mentioned that Thanksgiving 1944 in Italy was his favorite because it seemed to him that awful war would be over soon and he would be able to return to a life outside of world war. Every Thanksgiving I suspect he silently blessed Thanksgiving 1944 and his companions that fought World War Two with him.
As I do not go into comparisons, my life before Cancer and that I survived, I do not know for sure if I have seen better days because my memory is selective. These days have some very nice parts to them. I do wake with reminders of my age and concerns about what I am doing and how it will all turn out. But I am an optimist.
Everyone has some small stuff and sometimes not quite so small stuff that is kicking them in the keister, but I submit that if we go back just a couple of generations people lived their entire lives very much like the poor unfortunates that we see struggling from Hurricane Sandy. A few generations ago there was always those kinds of problems heating and lighting houses.
My Grandfather’s ranch got electricity after I left for Japan at age seven so it was not as amazing when I returned at age eleven to the Ranch having both electricity and propane. Previously, it was kerosene lamps and wood heating which was also what ran the stove.
Right after I got back from Japan there was the excitement of a black and white television that with a tall antenna got one channel, KTSM, a NBC affiliate so that we could see the Wide World of Disney and Bonanza on Sunday night.
At the time we felt fortunate, not put upon. We canned from the garden and harvested deer now that we had a refrigerator. I am ever so happy to buy my meat at the supermarket but I do know how to harvest.
Go back to 1912 and the stories of difficulties were even more stark. Not that those people really paid attention. Then we have the Pilgrims and their neighbors, the people already living in North America before the Pilgrims.
We celebrate Thanksgiving with some historical input from the Pilgrim’s First Thanksgiving, but that historical data is somewhat flawed and monolithic. Both the Native Americans and the Pilgrims had much to be thankful for at that time and had much to dread in coming years. To the Native Americans their entire civilized world was coming apart because of the pathogens Europeans carried unconsciously with them.
Which brings us to 2012. We have much to be thankful for and the pessimists among us give us an earful about the coming collapse of our society. Will it? No way to know but obviously this government must go over the fiscal cliff to stop spending money it does not have.
Again, I am an optimist and even more important, it does not take all that much to make me happy: a little love, good dog, cup of coffee and something interesting. It could be we as a society are going to be smacked around by life. The people in Greece and Spain say they lived so well for so long that it cannot stop, but for them it has somewhat stopped. But each woke up this morning. That is not so bad.
Dr. Michael Swickard is co-host of radio talk show News New Mexico 6 to 9 a.m. Monday - Friday on a number of New Mexico radio stations and through streaming. Email: michael@swickard.com
