Being thankful

It's not that easy to do some days. Being thankful takes work. To overcome feelings that come to the front unbidden and override any sense of appreciation at all. It's easier to be angry, jealous, cutting or snide; after all by now we all know that life isn't fair and we can't have everything the way we want it. "But can't I just have 'some' of what I want?" we cry.

Recently I was faced with - yet again - being told about a wonderful idea by someone in a position of relative power/authority/visibility. It was an idea that I'd been trying to promote for years. One that makes ultimate, common, simple sense to me, yet he was talking about it as if it were breakthrough thinking. Yes, it involved food. Local, sustainable food. And the need to change from the type of system that we have now (pretty much at all levels) to one that is less focused on produce/consume than on sustain/renew. We can't have exponential growth on a finite planet. That's truly not rocket science, yet marketed properly, it can seem to be.

So after fuming about the situation for a while and confessing to a friend that clearly I needed an attitude adjustment since apparently my journey on earth was about needing to learn humility, I received some wise words in an email from that friend. She reminded me that she (this may still have male/female overtones) too had experienced this in her work in a large consulting firm she has long-since left behind. The systems we are in and trying so hard to change favor those who market themselves well,  not necessarily those who are smarter, have better ideas, or are more skilled. Maybe the marketers have the ideas, but as often as not, they are simply selling someone else's stuff rather than having developed it themselves. That's when it hit me.

What angers and frustrates me about this situation is the same thing that angers and frustrates me about the food system. When marketers profit simply by slickly selling what others produce and adding no value to it themselves, that is an unnecessary expense. Processed food is like ideas that are repackaged and sold by consultants. The consultants make it look better, make you feel smarter or more loved by buying it or temporarily fix a problem like temporarily slaking hunger with junk food. But there is no there there and like junk food the consultants' projects often unravel, never having reached the potential that was promised.

It occurred to me that I am fortunate to know people who are on the ground working on the Sisyphean task of changing the food system to be one that truly feeds us in sustainable, fair and healthy ways. And to know people who valued their integrity more than a paycheck and walked away from situations in corporate settings that sucked the life out of their souls when they were ignored and others from outside came in and collected huge sums for saying the same thing. I need to remember that I'm not the only one who ever had a good idea and the test is whether someone is working to bring their ideas into the world and make it a better place for everyone, or whether they are just looking for the next big paycheck. I could be wrong, but I think those big paychecks are not sustainable...just like producing  junk food isn't.

These realizations are what I am thankful for this Thanksgiving.