Happy Thanksgiving from France: We’re Feeling Grateful!

This Thanksgiving finds Carla and me in Montpellier, France, far from the family gatherings, familiar tables, and traditions that usually mark the holiday for us. We won’t be sitting around a Thanksgiving table surrounded by family and friends this year, and of course we miss that. But in an odd way, Thanksgiving feels especially meaningful to us this time because we’ve spent the past couple of months being reminded, almost daily, just how fortunate we are.

We’ve walked through beautiful places we once knew only from photographs. We’ve met kind people whose lives look very different from our own, heard languages we don’t understand, eaten foods we couldn’t pronounce, gotten lost more than once, and found ourselves continually amazed by just how large, varied, and wonderful this world can be. And almost every day, Carla and I say some version of the same thing to one another: We are so grateful that this is our life right now.

I like the right now part of that sentence. Not forever. Not because every moment is perfect. Just right now. There is something enormously powerful about recognizing that while you are actually living it rather than looking back years later and realizing how fortunate you were. I think that may be one of gratitude’s greatest gifts. It brings us back to the life that is actually happening rather than the one we wish were happening, the one we’re planning for next year, or the one we remember from ten years ago. It asks us to look around and recognize that something here, in this moment, is worth appreciating.

I don’t mean that in a Pollyannaish way. Life can be terribly difficult. People get sick. Relationships end. Money disappears. Wars begin. Someone we love dies. Dreams don’t work out. There are days, months, and sometimes entire years when telling someone to “just be grateful” can sound not only simplistic but almost cruel. Gratitude should never be used to minimize suffering or to suggest that people ought to simply smile their way through hardship.

But I also don’t think suffering and gratitude cancel one another out. Human beings seem capable of holding more than one truth at the same time. We can be heartbroken and still grateful. We can be afraid and still grateful. We can wish desperately that something were different while recognizing that something else remains precious.

I was reminded of that recently while reading about people in Ukraine returning to communities devastated by war. Homes had been damaged. Food and shelter were uncertain. Winter was approaching. By almost any reasonable measure, their circumstances were extraordinarily difficult, and yet some people were celebrating simply because they were home again. Their problems hadn’t disappeared, but something still mattered enough to be grateful for.

That stayed with me.

Maybe gratitude isn’t pretending that what hurts doesn’t hurt. Maybe it’s simply refusing to allow what hurts to become the only thing we can see.

I suspect most of us, even during difficult periods, have more in our lives than we regularly notice. Not necessarily more money or more possessions, but more life. Someone who loves us. A friend who answers the phone. A warm cup of coffee. A body that carried us through another day. A dog ridiculously happy that we returned from the grocery store. A song. A memory. A sunrise. A meal. A place to sleep. The ability to laugh at something absurd five minutes after we were convinced the world had become intolerable.

None of those things erase hardship. But they belong in the story too.

Our minds are strange little creatures. They can become remarkably skilled at noticing what is missing while becoming almost blind to what remains. There is always another thing we could have - a larger house, more money, better health, more time, more certainty, a different job, a better body, a longer vacation. Human wanting is wonderfully creative. Give it one thing and it immediately begins drafting a proposal for the next.

Which is why I keep coming back to an old Buddhist saying I’ve always loved:

Enough is a feast.

Five words, and an entire philosophy of life tucked inside them.

Enough doesn’t mean we stop caring about injustice or poverty. It doesn’t mean we abandon ambition, stop trying to improve our lives, or tell people who are suffering that they should simply be satisfied with less. It means learning to recognize when something is sufficient for this moment.

That is harder than it sounds.

We live in a culture that is very good at teaching us that enough is always somewhere slightly beyond where we are now. One more purchase. One more achievement. One more upgrade. One more zero in the bank account. Then, apparently, we can relax. Except the finish line keeps moving.

Gratitude interrupts that chase. It doesn’t say, Never want anything more. It simply says, Before you run toward the next thing, notice what is already here.

That feels especially appropriate to Carla and me right now. Travel has given us extraordinary experiences, but it has also made us more aware of how little we actually need to feel happy. We don’t have most of our belongings with us. We don’t have our own house. We don’t have familiar routines. We often don’t even know where the nearest grocery store is when we arrive somewhere new.

And yet we wake up most mornings feeling incredibly fortunate.

Not because we have everything, but because what we have feels like enough.

That realization has surprised me. For much of life, I think many of us unconsciously equate abundance with accumulation - more things, more security, more options. But abundance can also mean having enough time to take a long walk, enough health to climb a hill, enough food to share dinner, enough curiosity to remain interested in the world, and enough people in our lives who would notice if we disappeared.

Those are riches too.

Maybe the real practice of gratitude isn’t waiting for Thanksgiving and making a list of everything that went right. Maybe it’s training ourselves to notice goodness while it’s happening. It’s catching ourselves in the middle of an ordinary moment and realizing, This is good. This person matters to me. I’m lucky to be here. I have enough.

Carla and I won’t be sitting around our usual Thanksgiving table this year. We’ll be in France, probably eating something that bears absolutely no resemblance to turkey and stuffing, and that’s okay. We’ll be thinking about the people we love—our family, our friends, and the people who have encouraged our wandering and followed along with our stories. Some we’ve known for decades. Others we’ve never met in person, yet somehow they’ve become part of the journey.

We’re grateful for all of you.

And we’re grateful for this strange, unpredictable, beautiful life that continues giving us far more than we know how to ask for.

Wherever you happen to be this Thanksgiving, I hope there is something - however small - that allows you to stop for a moment and recognize that life has placed something worthwhile in front of you. Not everything has to be perfect.

Maybe nothing has to be perfect.

Sometimes enough really is a feast.