Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, the time of year when we all turn our thoughts to the things we’re thankful for. We do this as we sit down to a meal that represents the bountiful harvest celebration on which the day is based. My husband and I live far from family, so we rarely spend Thanksgiving with them. Instead, we’ve creaed our own tradition including our own traditional meal. We have turkey, tabouli, sweet potatoes, pecan pie, and pumpkin pie. Sometimes we’ll also have bread and turkey gravy. This year we’ve chosen to spend the day with a couple we’ve become friends with over the past year and a half.
I know we’ll have a fun day, but it won’t be the Thanksgiving I remember from childhood where family gathered around, laughter spread around the table as bowls of food were passed, and there was the comfort that only comes from family. It’s hard to describe. We’ll have food, laughter, and fun, but it won’t be the same. There are moments when I miss those family dinners. Usually when I romanticize them like above. There were also the squabbles over how much time to spend with Dad’s family versus Mom’s family. There were hurt feelings when a sibling spent more time with the spouse’s family than with his or her own. Family disagreements left underlying tension even when my Grandma forbade the fight be allowed to ruin the holiday. I’m not sure how she sent that message, but she did.
Thanksgiving was always my favorite holiday. It was more about people than Christmas and it was always fun. I still prefer Thanksgiving over most other holidays. We don’t celebrate Christmas in my house, and I like it that way.
I decided several years ago to live my life with an attitude of gratitude (forgive the bad rhyme, please). I don’t feel more grateful around Thanksgiving than I do most of the year, but the day hasn’t lost its meaning for me. Every day I try to notice the good things in my life and to be grateful for them. Most days it includes family, friends, my husband, love, among many other things. Sometimes though it’s simple things like the washer and dryer on laundry day. Living in gratitude makes me more cognizant of the positive and less focused on the negative. Perhaps this was a way I choose to be happy.
I hope you’ll take the idea of thankfulness and transfer it to the other days of your life instead of reserving it for a holiday that comes once a year. It’s done me a world of good. Now that I’ve put it in writing, the next time I’m having an ungrateful day, I’ll refer back to this blog to remind myself to keep an attitude of gratitude. Feel free to do the same.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Recently, my husband and I spent an entire day setting up ourbenefits through his work. As we explored the options available through his company, we were alternately frustrated and amused. As a writer, I don’t get company benefits, so we rely on the benefits he gets through his work for medical, dental, vision, life insurance, disability insurance, etc. Every year it seems like there’s some new twist we didn’t expect.
Health insurance plans change just enough to warrant a new investigation. Covered items, co-pays, and percentages seem to create a need just to “make sure” the old plan is still the best option. And, what about the new plan being offered? Oh, well, maybe that would be the best bet except look what it does to the one ongoing prescription one of has. That alone would break the bank. So we’re back to where we started after three and a half hours of calculation and comparison. At one point, we even considered whether it would make more sense to just put money in a savings account to use for medical expenses. We quickly ruled that idea out. Our medical expenses would need to be less than the premiums that year. While many years it would work fine with the few doctor visits we have, there’s still that ongoing perscription and the off chance that will be the year we have a medical catastrophe. So in the end, if we want to take the chance that all the start will align perfectly, the universe will protect us from all bacteria, viruses, accidents, and other medical catastrophes, maybe we could take the chance. Since that’s unlikely, we chose the plan that best fits our potential needs for the coming year.
And, is the vision plan worth paying the premiums or does it make more sense to just put aside enough to cover eye exams? After a few quick calculations, the vision plan doesn’t make sense for us. It probably does for people with children though.
The dental plan. Neither option is really all that great. Both are better than nothing, but when the anticipated needs are projected neither is quite enough coverage. Ughh! And that leads to a discussion of the cost of dental care and wondering if we’re being overcharged. It’s not like there’s a way to compare the prices of individual dental offices without visits.
At least the life insurance and death and disability insurance seem to have stayed straightforward, but we’d better read it just to make sure nothing changed. Okay, we read. I hope we didn’t miss anything.
Oh, and now they’re offering legal insurance. We don’t anticipate needing a lawyer. Or is there something we’re not aware we need to do? If so, we’ll just have to pay for it. We decided against legal insurance.
His work decided a few years ago that in order to encourage their employees to live healthier lifestyles, they would offer extra benefit dollars for participating in a lifestyles program through WebMD. In theory, this is a good idea. In practice, I would guess nine out of ten people handle this the same way we did. Go to the site and do the minimum necessary to get the extra benefit dollars, then promptly forget about it until the next year. We had to read several pages of information after watching a video with no fast forward. Oh, and we both have to watch it for it to count. I guess they don’t trust us to watch it together. Okay, we watched it together and then I watched it again. Did I remember to mention I couldn’t fast forward? And there’s a quiz included. Wow, what fun! We live a healthy lifestyle anyway, so the exercise seems like just one more hoop to jump through to get the benefits.
All the while we’re investigating our options the website keeps timing us out forcing us to close the browser and start over from the beginning. Who built this interface?
So, at the end of the day, after we’ve complained, laughed, and complained some more, we get our benefits choices made, finish our individual lifestyle programs, and submit everything. As I get a little distance from it, I remember the days when we didn’t have any health insurance and expensive medical care had to wait until we saved enough to cover it (yeah, right) or it was catastrophic (more likely) . I think about what we’d do if we had to buy the aforementioned prescription without insurance. We discussed it, and decided it’s time to explore some more natural options for resolving the issue.
I’m grateful for the benefits my husband’s job brings to our life, but I wonder why the process has to be so frustrating. It seems to me a streamlined system makes a lot more sense. All this confusion is provided in the guise of providing choice. When the choice is between which is less bad, that doesn’t seem like much of a choice.
This gets me to thinking about the healthcare reform being debated in Congress right now. We hear the naysayers screaming that health care reform will take away choice. Huh? What choice is there now? Our insurance provides a list of doctors that are approved. To use an unapproved doctor costs double the co-pay at a minimum. The insurance company decides which procedures are best for patients. Your doctor may not be that honest with you, but I promise you you are not getting a treatment option the insurance company won’t approve even if it is the best option for you. You may be receiving treatment that must be tried first before the treatment known to work can be performed. I don’t want to turn this into a political debate, but I think everyone can agree that the medical care system could be more user friendly and that everyone deserves to be well enough to be productive members of society.
Okay, let me start by saying I’m a Monk fan. Recently, I watched an episode where the ever happy, slightly ditzy Lt. Randy Disher, told Monk his life was changed when he read a bumper sticker on a car. The bumper sticker said “Happiness is a Choice.” The kicker was the car was on fire at the time but Randy apparently missed the irony in that. He chose to be happy after that.
Anyway, I’ve been giving the idea a lot of thought. Well, more accurately the concept has been simmering in the back of my brain since I watched the episode. We’ve all known people who were incessantly, even annoyingly, happy. Were they so because they made a conscious choice to be happy? We’ve also all known people who wouldn’t recognize happiness if it shook them senseless. Was that a choice?
In real life, we’re often suspicious of people who are too happy or happy too often. It can be uncomfortable to be around people who are chronically cheerful. We begin to think they’re not in touch with reality, their mood is chemically enhanced, or they don’t grasp the seriousness of certain issues. So what is the right amount of happiness?
Much has been written about both happiness and unhappiness. I’ve written many poems on the subject myself exploring the idea of allowing myself to be happy. For many years, I felt guilty any time I was happy. I also always expected some devastating thing to happen when I was happy. My fiction often includes some type of a search for happiness though the concept of happy endings being a necessity eludes me. It just doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes the ending that makes the most sense for a piece of fiction isn’t what’s commonly thought of as “happily ever after”. Often it’s more a resolution of situation and/or a growth of character. So while every story may not end “happily ever after”, happiness may just be accepting the life we have and doing the best we can to make it the life we want. Fiction done well can reflect that truth of real life.
I’ve begun to accept happiness in my life without reservation. Life is better that way. Is that choosing to be happy? Maybe or maybe it’s just recognizing that I have good in my life. When bad things happen, I feel sadness, anger, and frustration. Still, I smile easily, laugh with gusto, and see lots of good around me. That feels like happiness, and I embrace it.
I’m going to close with a poem I wrote in 1999 when I was so mired in negativity that I was unsure how to be happy. This poem examines my struggle to accept happiness. I hope it inspires you to embrace the happiness in your life.
HAPPINESS
Happiness sneaked up
Wrapped her arms around me
Surprised me with her power
Snuggled me in her warmth
Enlightened me
Brought me out of the darkness
Allowed me to shine
I wasn’t looking for her
Never expected her
Didn’t recognize her
Wondered what the catch was
Questioned her
Pushed her away
Feared her
Accepting her meant letting go of the anger
Could I do that?
Happiness persisted through it all
Held me
Waited for me
Comforted me
And promised to stay
Even to grow
As long as I would let her
I smiled
Embraced happiness
And let her live around me
Inside my heart and mind
Let her build a barrier to protect me