Diagnosing Thanksgiving

One of the things I've learned by experience as a therapist is how we tend to focus our attention on special parts of our lives and magnify them, even if they appear to an outsider to be secondary or minor. Obsession can only be about specifics. Whether it be enthusiasms or despairs, it often feels from the inside as if this is simply reality, while to an outsider it can seem an odd way to focus all your energy.

Certainly the Zeitgeist is not sanguine. There is as much unease in the air as there was in the coldest days of the Cold War. (I leave out the turmoils of the 60s and early 70's because I was a young man then and the world did not seem as fragile as it does now to my older self). And my own focus --which feels like reality to me, of course-- is on loss and anxiety.

Yet, there is still very much to be thankful to God for.