Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind. – Rudyard Kipling
If you believe the above quote to be true, then I would love nothing more than to be a drug dealer. Maybe I already am.
Today marks post #350 on this blog and just one day before Thanksgiving I feel proud and grateful to have come this far and thank you for your time, attention and reaction to my “addiction”. Like a drug, I’m hooked, but unlike a drug, I am using it to try and change the lives of other people, including my own. Become more by helping other people to do the same.
Speaking of other people, there will be more than a few at my home tomorrow for Thanksgiving. Family will join together for the annual tradition — but this year I’ve decided to bring back a ghost. Call it four hours of freedom, an exodus if you will, if even temporary, from the tempestuous devices you might even be holding in your hand right now.
We’re going phone-free for Thanksgiving. Check it at the door and pick it up after dessert.
That’s right, we’re bringing back an oldie but a goodie, the ghost of Thanksgiving past. We might actually talk to each other, we might share a story or two, or some recent good news, or even a challenge. We might actually watch some Turkey Day football, we might just realize we have all gotten one year older, we might just feel like the time spent together is special and moments like these are fleeting. We might remember that it’s only been five years since we suffered the life-shattering realization that from one Thanksgiving to the next, life can change in dramatic fashion and leave you nearly emotionally bankrupt.
Five years ago we experienced the first holiday without my father-in-law, Jerry Gross, who died following surgery for esophageal cancer, just weeks before Thanksgiving. Just one year before, on the same holiday, he was alive, full of life, and vitality. Maybe this Thanksgiving we’ll share a few thoughts about him…memories which warm our hearts and can simultaneously pain them with the now suppressed, but easily brought-to-the-surface pangs of loss. Easier to feel it all when you’re not tied to your device, head down in silence, distracted from the emotional yearnings of those closest to you.
I get it, it will be different. There’s no doubt there is benefit to being connected. The world is a different place because of it. Our devices, especially our smartphones, bring us together in ways no one could have possibly imagined. Yet it also waters down our relationships in ways that can render them nearly irrelevant in scope and sincerity. Thanksgiving Day is not the day to bury your gaze in the palm of your hand, but instead to use those same eyes to view the importance and meaning of those you hold dear, your family, and to stay true to the theme of the day, to offer thanks and gratitude for what you’ve got and for those you love.
For a few hours tomorrow we’ll focus on sharing the most powerful drug used by mankind – words – in this case the words spoken to each other. We might even realize the word love can be spelled another way – T-I-M-E. And the chance to spend some of it in awareness, together.
This time, this holiday, we’re bringing back the ghost.
I challenge you to do the same.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Until next time, thanks for taking the time.
Mark
Mark Brodinsky, Author, Blogger, Financial Services
Author: The #1 Amazon Best-Seller: It Takes 2. Surviving Breast Cancer: A Spouse’s Story
(http://www.spouses-story.com/)
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I live it buddy. Thank you for your inspiration. Happy Thanksgiving.