Exhaustion, Flies, & Ceremonies: Celebrating Thanksgiving

“I’m the kind of tired that sleep won’t fix.”

Last month when I heard my new friend, Lisa Brooks, say those words I thought: I know that feeling. 

I’m also currently living that feeling.

I’m exhausted. I’m exhausted at the body level … at the mind level  … at the soul level. 

This year my dog (read: son) died. I rebranded my business. I designed and reconfigured my website (4 times) … by myself. Taught for the first time at a particular major conference. Created and filmed 3 cohesive classes for an online platform. Restructured some studio happenings. Started this blog. 

And that’s just the last two months.

I teach slowing down, pacing, awareness, sustainability, value systems, and connection … because that’s what I need to learn. 

Lately I’ve felt like I’m just going to GO. I’m doing because it can be DONE. It’s the more-is-more syndrome. 

When I feel this coming on I know I’ve been neglecting my gratitude practice. I’m not talking about an Instragrammable / book on the shelf / talk-show version / sit down with your friends and talk it out thanksgiving practice. I’m talking about true Thanksgiving.

Dr. Stephen Porges, founder of the Polyvagal Theory, has stated over and again that gratitude is the most powerful input for resiliency and a healthy nervous system. 

I obviously need that right now. And I have a feeling I’m not alone. 

Explicitly acknowledging and naming the things you are thankful and have gratitude for brings about a sense of knowing that you are deeply connected to your world … supported by it (even if it doesn’t look the way you’d prefer) … challenged by it … not in charge of it all … smaller than you realize … more important than you realize … that you have responsibilities but are not responsible for the wholeness … although you are a valuable piece of the whole. 

Gratitude is a ceremony of reciprocity. It’s a practice of exchange that is mutually beneficial. When I have gratitude for something I perceive its value, and honor its contribution to my life and the lives at large. 

Reciprocity only works if all things are equal - acknowledging that no parts of the whole are more or less important than any other, and all parts play a necessary role within the whole. 

It’s a hard concept to truly “get” when you are raised in and acculturated by a capitalist community. When most things are reduced to a dollar amount … including your time … and worth. It’s difficult to wrap our minds around all things in our world being equal when some aren’t monetarily valuable. 

I can easily give thanks for my home, my food, my loving family. Those are obvious signifiers of feeling safe and secure … and I am filled with thanks for that.

It’s more challenging to give thanks for bugs, wildfires, those empty spots in my schedule that represent lack of income. Though those are things that create space in the world … eating away and decomposing matter, cleaning out expired artifacts, moving people and animals across landscapes, and opening up generative spaces for new ideas and works to unfold. They too are a part of wholeness. 

It’s really difficult for me to give thanks for death … most of the nightly news … intolerance … indifference … hate. Those really irk my sense of safety. It’s not the words, but the feelings they bring forth from within. My feelings of scarcity and insecurity. I work to be able to have some sort of gratitude around those feelings … those personal feelings of physical, psychological, and emotional pain. Maybe as way of understanding they are a part of wholeness too, or as a way to appreciate their absence when cycles move away from them.

Or simply as a way of honoring my own inherent vulnerability. 

If we’re practicing gratitude, aren’t the rough edges that polish us into shape

the most thanks worthy?

When I filter my last two months through this lens, I realize I haven’t been in deficit … working hard just to work hard. I’ve been within a lesson. I just wasn’t aware until I started writing about gratitude. The dividend being - What have I learned? About my value systems / vulnerabilities / needs / wants / ideas? If the cost I’ve paid feels too high, now I have an opportunity to reconsider future efforts … to recalibrate.  

I’m not advocating for the endurance of pain and suffering. I’m simply curious to experience what life feels like if we take a lesson from our indigenous brothers and sisters, and practice a ceremony of Thanksgiving for the wholeness of life routinely, and not just per calendar.

HOMEWORK:

• Please take some time and read (or at least scan) this link from the The Journal of Sustainable Education. It’s an article about Gratitude as Ceremony from the perspective of Indigenous writers. It uses the sacred prayer, Ohenton Karihwatehkwen, handed down by Creator, as a centralizing theme. It’s worth the read, and the least we can do to honor the culture.

Journal Link

• After reading take a life pause to name and honor those things you’re grateful for … in a way that honors their equality (rather than your stewardship or onus), and invites in true reciprocity. 

*** As I wrote this post a fly found its way to my desk. It buzzed around the whole time and now seems to be gone. When I researched the significance of flies as totem they are said to represent abundance and prosperity during times of adversity. 

If you need me I’ll just be over here Thanking, Fly.

~ james CRADER