What am I thankful for? I am thankful for Thanksgiving, the perfect opportunity to stuff your face while enjoying the company of the people you love. I am thankful for the gift of food and eating, an indescribable experience no matter what food you have--a music in the mouth that somehow emerges miraculously from a blend of chemicals and neurons. Last night while out at a bar with my friends from high school, I realized suddenly how thankful I was for all of them, for each one of them is beautiful in their own way, and how thankful I am for the many more people in the world whose lives have just barely touched mine, for the gift of walking into a crowded bar and seeing faces I once knew, laughing and relaxing and enjoying drinks, and getting the chance to catch up with them again, and everyone being more beautiful and more fully themselves than they were when last I saw them. I imagine this is what heaven would be like. I am grateful for the continuity and entanglement of space and time, for these fetters that set us free and allow us to experience reality, because without these filters reality is an inchoate explosion that only Itself can understand. I am grateful for having a mind, for having a brain that allows so many millions of thoughts to pass through me every day, allowing me to think back and forward, giving me some measure of freedom from the present. I am grateful for each one of you, my friends, who each of you find ways to appear every day in those millions of thoughts flitting through me, who thereby enrich my life, and hopefully I yours in turn. I am grateful for Whatever holds us up and keeps us going, for That which has kept me and keeps me from falling apart at every moment. I am grateful for life, and I am grateful for death, for without death life would be unendurable.
-JMK
-JMK
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