Land Acknowledgement: This blog is written on the traditional lands of the Doeg people, who were exterminated after years of sustained genocidal endeavors by colonizers of European descent.
I don't celebrate American Thanksgiving in the traditional spirit of the holiday as established by Puritan Christian extremists, made official by George Washington, and fixed in date by Abraham Lincoln. I'm grateful for the Doeg people who maintained this land, for the workers who make my life possible, for my family, and for my community, but it is the people and the land I thank, not a higher power.
As for lolita, I'm eternally glad to be alive in a time and place where the fashion and community are accessible to me. Lolita is important to me as a form of self expression, a dash of the surreal in a mundane life, but that's only part of the experience.
Although I love public speaking, I'm actually introverted: I need plenty of recharge time between social events and I have trouble forming stable friend groups. The lolita community, including my local and online communities, is one of those few welcoming places where I feel included but not as though I'm a lynchpin. I don't have to lead, I don't have to be exceptional, I just show up and exist. That type of opportunity is a rarity, and one for which I am deeply grateful.
Community is a strange thing to be grateful for because of its complexity. It's not just being invited to one tea party or getting one free sticker; it's a million different actions, layers of unsaid communication, and the slow development of trust. I can say I'm grateful to my comm or my discord servers, but it's not as though a community is welded together in one single action-- it takes time and energy from everyone involved, as well as choices to regard someone as worthwhile.
In the end, gratitude is a choice: beyond rejecting or accepting reality, by being grateful, a person both accepts and acknowledges the positive. It's a form of retrospective optimism, a way to look into the past and keep the best parts close at hand. I don't often think of the past in this lens, but it may be helpful in my constant goal to build a better future. If I can pass on the kindnesses I've lived, maybe I can make this sense of gratitude grow. As a wise man once said, "be excellent to each other".
Even with this positivity, the national holiday of Thanksgiving is not for me. American civic religion has dressed numerous atrocities in the clothing of pageantry. I cannot bring myself to give thanks in a way that meshes with patriotic myth. It's not some national dream that matters, but the individual acts of duty and mutual aid that make life and gratitude possible.
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