I heard a lot of people this year speak badly about turkey. 

Thanksgiving turkey is traditional, as well as a number of other dishes. The familiar and the comforting sensations as we gather aroudn the table and observe the holiday. 

Was this the same as last year? I’m not sure they all blur together. What was different this year? The point was to be the same, wasn’t it? 

It must have been the same. It must have been different. 

It’s too close to see. 

I am taking a minute to look at what has been happening this last year, and what I would like to be happening. I do that a lot. With things were different, rail against how my life is not how I wish it might be. 

It’s too close to see.  

I went to a public place with other smells, sounds and voices and wrote down what I wished were happening. What am I hoping for? Is it really missing? 

If I reach for categories—What am I doing that is creative? What am I doing that uses my voice? What am I doing that make me grow? 

Upon examination, I am surprised to see more than I realized. I am not so hopeless as I feared. 

Gretchen Rubin wrote a book titled The Happiness Project. She was exploring what it meant to be happy and how to be more of it. I remember her writing that if she weren’t able to recognize that she was actually happy, she wouldn’t get the full benefit of it. 

Holly Golightly in Breakfast at TIffany’s didn’t know her cat belongeduntil he was gone. And Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz took her whole epic adventure to realize she had the secret to getting home all along. 

Happiness could be so worn out I don’t see it anymore. I am tired of these comfortable shoes, but it turns out all the others are just wrong. 

I put a coat of polish on the shoes and maybe I can feel newly satisfied. Or at least know that I am not and begin to look for something better.