Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig: Thanksgiving Every Day (Even When Things Are Not So Good)
Thanksgiving weekend for Americans. For Israelis, however, there doesn’t seem much to give thanks about these days. No matter where you live, though, there’s a lot to be thankful for – starting that you are even alive! So here’s some highly unusual, uplifting, food for thought.
How often have we heard people say “I’m lucky to be alive” because they just missed being seriously hurt or killed in some accident or terror attack? Indeed, Judaism has a special prayer for someone escaping danger: “birkhat gomel.” But this is missing the main point: everyone in the world is incredibly lucky to be alive! Literally – in several ways.
First, although we do not know for sure if there is life anywhere else in the universe, it is clear that the chances of life “evolving” on any one planet are very, very small – it entails many “just right” circumstances. We happen to be living on a planet where this did happen; the chance of that is less than winning America’s Powerball Lottery. So just from an astronomical standpoint, we all should be thanking our lucky star (pun intended)!
Second, in many cases the chances of your parents meeting where and when they did is also quite small. At some point during your parents’ young adulthood, they met (even superficially) a few thousand people, among the hundreds of millions that they theoretically could have met. And amongst this large population, there were hundreds they reasonably could have married. So what? Well, if they had met someone else, you wouldn’t be here! So, you’re doubly lucky!
Third, and something you have probably never thought of, is the most important “lucky event” of them all. As with all women, your mother dropped one ovum each month down her fallopian tubes to be (potentially) impregnated; but your father’s ejaculate contained close to one hundred million (100,000,000!) sperm. If the specific sperm that impregnated your mom’s egg had been beaten in that swimming race by any among the other “99,999,999” sperm, YOU would not have been born! In your stead, someone else pretty similar to you.
Who thinks of this? That’s precisely the point of being thankful. How much you enjoy your life is largely a matter of attitude and perspective. You can focus on the few missing few drops at the top of your cup, or at the entire cup that’s mostly brimming with life (yours). As human beings, we are capable of shifting our viewpoint once we look at the mirror straight on, instead of from the side (or upside down). Some people don’t need to do this – their natural predisposition (what is usually called “attitude”) is to be positive and optimistic. Others are naturally pessimistic, seeing more night than day. And then there’s the broad middle who can go either way, depending…
On their social circle; on their socio-economic status; on their social happiness (quality of marriage; relationship with their kids); and also on the state of their State. But there’s one other extremely important factor, especially relevant in Israel’s contemporary situation: how a person consumes media information.
I am not indulging here in modernity’s national sport: media-bashing. Actually, if anyone’s at fault for the media’s relentless negativity it’s the “people” (that’s you and me). No matter where you live, when was the last time you read this headline? “Yesterday, Millions of [choose your country] Had an Uneventful Day.” Never. Because we, the readers, listeners, and viewers, want to get “bad news” – almost the only kind that we consider “news” at all.
Why? For that we have to go back several hundred thousand years (or even millions). All creatures on Earth – and certainly evolving humans who were not particularly strong or fast – had (and have) to be on constant lookout for danger that could annihilate them: back then, tigers and human enemies; today, technology (e.g., cars) and still human enemies (Hamas et al). Thus, danger-sniffing is planted deeply in our genes. And what constitutes “danger” (socially and personally) is not only the usual stuff (plane crashes; war breaking out) but also – even increasingly – unusual stuff that’s unfamiliar. Flying machines? (Early 20th century) People changing their sex?? (Mid-20th century) Robots manufacturing cars faster than humans can??? (Late 20th century) Designer babies?!?! (21st century).
The media – old (“legacy”) and new (“digital”) – are doing an increasingly better job of ferreting out each and every “potentially dangerous” item of information from around the world. And as we absorb more and more of this (with the occasional respite through sports scores and fashion fads), our perception of the world is that things are going to hell in a basket faster than ever. As a matter of fact, per capita there is less violence in the world today than ever before in human history! (Don’t take my word for this; read Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.)
We “moderns” are caught in a paradoxical situation: the better things get (objectively), the worse they seem (subjectively). The solution is not to avoid the media (we do want to know what real dangers lie out there). Rather, it is to choose wisely which media to consume – and then understand that 99% of what is happening in the world is positive, precisely what is NOT found in the media (because we don’t think that good news is really “news”).
Freed from the shackles of informational negativity, we can then more realistically work on developing a more positive and optimistic attitude towards the world – micro (ours personally) and macro (society and the world at large). Indeed, there’s even a very positive piece of news in this: the latest research shows that people with a generally positive attitude have, on average, a lifespan that’s a few years longer than those with ingrained (or acquired) negativity. So not only are the former “lucky to be alive,” but by appreciating that fact they actually get to live longer – and that’s not a matter of luck.
In this story, there’s one final “you’re really lucky” booster worth mentioning. Let’s return to your parents’ egg and sperm: now go back to every generation of your personal forebears! In other words, if any procreation act of any of your great/great(etc.)/grandparents had a different sperm win that specific impregnation race to the ovum, you would not be here (or anywhere, ever)! This one, repeated, “generational” piece of good fortune should be enough to get us to count our blessings every minute of the day – no matter how temporarily bleak our personal (or the nation’s) situation.
