Thankfulness (November '07)

I mean to type this blog a few days ago, but I've been sick as a...well, really sick, and I haven't had the mental energy or the focus to do anything but sit still and think about how much pain individual air molecules can cause when they keep careening willy-nilly into me with no regard whatsoever for my condition.

That's not the best start for a blog about thankfulness. Damn my honesty. I'd curse the medication, too, but I really think it's helping and I'm not one to tempt fate. Maybe that's where I ought to start. I'm thankful for medication that helps me feel better when I'm sick.

As nice as that was, in a fifth-grade-essay sort of way, it really has nothing to do with what I sat down to write about, and if I don't just say "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" I may never get around to the blog I sat down to write, so perhaps that's the best course of action after all.

One more bit of prolegomena, though. Once I got the idea for this blog a few days ago and played with it in my head, it struck me how much the central theme was akin to a blog I read a couple of years ago by Malcolm-Jamal Warner entitled "Happy white-man-stole-land-from-the-Native-American-Day ." If you go to his blog by clicking that link, you can find it by clicking the link in the margin entitled "older" under "blog archives." While you're there, read a few of his other blogs. You just might dig them.

Getting on with the topic at hand, I was called in to work Wednesday night (the night before Thanksgiving,) because Thanksgiving Eve usually turns out to be a pretty busy night at our little small town nightclub. It seems that all of the college students and young professionals who have come home to spend the holidays with mom and dad can only handle so much "family time." By the end of the night, they want to go out and find some alcoholic refuge, which the local bars and clubs are only too happy to provide.

As it turned out, we were not busy at all for most of the night, and I was left standing alone out in the cold waiting for people to show up so I could check their ID's. Nothing much was happening inside, and standing in the cold beats standing in the cigarette smoke any day. I was just getting ready to head inside when my friend Sinan showed up with a bunch of his Albanian friends.

Sinan is from Kosovo, and plays keeper for our soccer team. He's also an incredibly nice guy, and engaged, so while his friends were inside looking for girls to dance with, Sinan stayed outside and chatted with me.

As is often the case, the conversation turned to politics and history. I always ask a lot of questions because I am embarrassingly under-informed about the history of the Balkan nations. Sinan is always happy to help me out with intelligent and even-handed responses. I'm paraphrasing here, as I'm going from memory.

I'll spare you the play-by-play of the conversation, and skip to the part where I asked him if he plans to stay, or if he would like to go back to Kosovo.

"Oh, stay here, of course. Kosovo is very beautiful, and the people are wonderful, but I would have to be crazy to want to go back there."

This only inspired me to investigate further.

"It is so free here." he said. "You can go where you want, when you want, and there is enough for everybody if you want to work. Here you can live without being nervous or afraid. For instance, in America, if the police pull you over, they have a reason! I can drive and I don't have to be afraid when I see the police. If they do pull you over, they write your ticket and that is the end. They don't try to threaten you for bribes."

I laughed and mentioned things like getting pulled over for "DWB (driving while black.)"

"Oh sure, this place is not perfect, and there are some bad people everywhere, but here that is the exception, and everybody knows that this is wrong. Even the news will sometimes talk about it. Where I am from, that (news coverage of police misdoings) would never happen. For the most part, you do not have to be afraid here."

Sinan went on to tell me more about life in the Balkans, and especially what things were like for people in the former Yugoslavia.

"Religion was banned, so if they caught you praying--to anyone, Jesus, Allah, Buddah, no matter--they could shoot you or take you to prison for as long as they want. We could never just stand here and talk like we are talking now. If someone reported you, you would go to prison or worse. Here you have choices for jobs and education. Even today, in Kosovo, many places have no roads or running water or electricity. The infrastructure was never built up equally. Going from Kosovo to Serbia is like going from Mexico to the United States. It's that big of a difference. I think many times Americans don't realize how good life is here."

We talked for an hour or so, and he told me a great deal more about his life here, and what life was like back in the Balkans. We chatted until his friends came out, and they moved on to another club. At that point I went inside and began to chat with the few regulars left at the bar, including an Indian man who moved here recently from London, and a Kenyan gentleman who is half Gikuyu and half Kalinjin. We began to chat about freedoms and some of the topics that Sinan and I had discussed.

"It's hard to explain to someone who has never lived like that, but it changes you." they said. "You find that you are always very careful about what you say, and to whom, because anything you say can be reported, and if that happens, you may never be heard from again--and what of your family? No, you must always take great care with what you say, where you go, who you are seen with, and the like."

I have been somewhat educated about the unrest that disturbed India and Kenya years ago, while these men were growing up, so I was well aware of what they were talking about in an intellectual sense.

Still, having never lived under that kind of fear, or that kind of oppression, it can be hard to even grasp what it must have been like for them, or how sweet their freedoms must now seem.

And that, in the end, is the point. No matter how difficult our lives may be at times, no matter how much we might be frustrated with government bureaucracy or daily inconveniences, no matter how hard our lives may seem here in this country, we are so unbelievably blessed when viewed from a global perspective.

I'm not saying that this nation can't improve, and I'm certainly not saying that we should remain content with the status quo. Lord knows that I'm one of the most outspoken people you'll ever meet in terms of advocating political changes and government reform.

But with that said, it's important that we takes some time off--at the VERY LEAST one day in our year--to reflect on how very free and how truly blessed we really are. I can sit here and type this, and you can sit where you are sitting and read this, and neither of us has to worry about the neighbors reporting us, or the secret police kicking in our doors, or any of the myriad other worries that people in other nations live with EVERY DAY OF THEIR LIVES.

Our water is clean and fit for human consumption. We could dumpster dive and come up with more abundant, healthier, and cleaner food than would be available at any price in many countries. We can spend time with our families in freedom from persecution or fear, and if we choose we can pray and thank any god we please for that blessing.

I know I'm a few days late and I'm always a few dollars short, but I hope you'll take the time as you read this to think about the many, many blessings we have as residents of the various free countries that we live in (Daz, Lea, Harry and others included here,) and maybe even take a few moments to give thanks, and to do what we can to make someone else's life a little bit freer and more rewarding in the process.

Thanks for your time,

~The Yankee