On Being Thankful

First of all, sorry for the absence. It's been a busy holiday weekend and I haven't been home.

Okay, onto tonight's musings:

This Thanksgiving, I wasn't particularly thankful. This sounds kind of awful so let me explain. I'm constantly thankful for the things I have in my day-to-day life. I'm always thankful for my friends, family, *relative* good health, the roof over my head, the food on my plate, the sun, moon, stars, etc...

But I had nothing to be extra thankful for that I'd want to highlight on this day for giving thanks. My job sucks, I'm still single, and I can't get up off my lazy arse to do anything productive.

So why should this day be different from any other day?

On a whim, I decided to hit up Netflix for a couple of documentaries. The first, "Bowling for Columbine", I'd already seen when it came out, but was interested in seeing it again. As with the first time I saw it, I was shocked and appalled. But then, that's Michael Moore's modus operandi. He's out to shock the world. I believe he has an agenda of some kind, though. He seems to be a sensationalist.

Even so, it made me thankful that I live in a country that doesn't need to lock its doors, or carry firearms. I'm thankful that as a young woman, I can walk alone at night and not be afraid for my life. I'm not saying that Canada is perfect by any means, but I think it's one of the greatest countries on Earth and I'm grateful that I was born and raised here.

The second documentary I watched, "The Last Days" was on a completely other level. It is an Academy Award winning account of the stories of 5 Hungarian Holocaust survivors. I have read a few first-hand accounts of the nature of the camps, but NOTHING could have prepared me for the photographs and footage from the camps, and the stories that were told by the survivors.

I watched in horror as the survivors described their lives as the Nazi occupation spread across Europe and their subsequent treatment in their hometowns and on the way to the camps. One woman recounted the moment she saw a small child's head being bashed against the side of a truck, then tossed in the back, and said "That's when I stopped talking to God" I burst into tears and wasn't able to stop.

I sobbed like a baby throughout the accounts of each person's experiences in the camps. The documentary alternated between the videos of the interviews, and actual footage of the gas chambers, crematoriums, piles of emaciated bodies, shorn heads, overcrowded barracks, firing squads, and massive firepit graves. I cried so hard I couldn't breathe, and didn't stop crying until after the last of the post-Liberation footage/photos were shown, and the happy endings of the survivors started.

I cried for the Jews in Auschwitz, Dachau and Majdanek, but I also cried for all the other atrocities that modern man, who should know better, has committed in the last 100 years. For a moment, I felt personally responsible for the suffering of the world that has been caused by man's cruelty towards man.

All through this, though, I felt an overwhelming thankfulness that not only do I live in a free, democratic and tolerant nation, but that my mind is open and enlightened enough to know right from wrong. I know that regardless what a man's race, religion, nationality, sexuality or lifestyle may be, that he has the right to live and prosper as much as I do.

I know that not all humankind has reached this point yet, but I'm thankful that I, and so many others, have and are working to spread the word. I don't think that cruelty and intolerance can ever be completely eradicated, but we can certainly try to make it scarce and unprofitable.

And so, on this almost-not-so-Thanks-giving, I am thankful for my amazing home nation and my sound, compassionate mind.