📿 The Quiet Rebellion of Gratitude

Moving beyond hope and fear in the year to come

“Between hope and fear is a place. It’s called Thanksgiving. I will meet you there.”

- Rumi, although I may be misremembering this quote

By the time you’re reading this, it’s likely you’ve been engulfed in the horror known as Black Friday. But as I write this, Thanksgiving looms—a time to pause, reflect, and give thanks.

Oddly enough, since the election earlier this month, I’ve been steeped in the Thanksgiving Day spirit. Meaning: focused on gratitude.

I know that might sound strange. “What is there to be grateful for?” you might wonder.

Here’s what I see: while some celebrate what they hope a new administration will bring—improved economy, safer cities, or even just lower taxes—others are consumed by fear. Fear of worsening inequalities, fear of escalating hate, fear of what the next four years might hold.

If you’re part of a community that feels targeted, your fear is valid. If you stand in solidarity with those communities, as I do, that fear is deeply felt. But here’s the thing: none of us want to live in fear.

And, oddly enough, it’s not all that helpful to live in a fixated form of hope either (Sharon Salzberg actually wrote a great piece on the subject of hope, and I invite you to check it out).

In Buddhist thought, hope and fear are two sides of the same coin. To say, “I hope it doesn’t rain on my birthday” is to admit, “I’m afraid it will.” Hoping a new president “fixes everything” mirrors the fear that they absolutely won’t. Both pull us out of the present moment, investing energy into a future that is, by its nature, uncertain.

I’m choosing to focus my energy elsewhere.

Instead of chasing hope or fleeing fear, I’m training my attention on what’s happening now. And, in the present, to consciously seek joy and gratitude feels like an act of quiet rebellion.

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Right now, as I write to you, there is a roaring fire heating our house, sheltering us from the biting cold outside. Right now, my daughter Ruby has drifted off to what could be a long nap amidst a somewhat painful (for all of us) sleep regression. Right now, it is surprisingly quiet in a house that has become increasingly noisy with every animal and human we seem to have brought into it; there are five of them now, to our two, and I realize we are quite outnumbered.

Each of these moments holds two truths. The first is a genuine sense of gratitude for what is going well: we are warm and safe, my child is sleeping soundly and it’s peaceful in our home. The second part of each statement is that these things are taking place amidst the backdrop of a harsh reality: it’s very cold out and our daughter screams her head off at night and it’s rare for us to have a moment of quiet here.

One sign that my meditation practice is working for me is that I am completely comfortable holding both truths: they can co-exist in my heart.

Life can be cold and harsh and loud and exhausting and I can still turn my mental attention to what is going well. That is a sign of practice.

This perspective is a muscle I’ve worked to build, but not everyone approaches the world this way. I know people whose lives appear outwardly secure—financially stable, surrounded by love, largely unaffected by systemic injustice—yet they can still fixate on a single negative detail in their lives, obsessively gnawing on it like a dog with a bone.

For many newer meditators, that fixation extends to the future. I’m leading a class entitled Compassion in a Trash Fire which is essentially a post-election cycle nervous system reboot to get people’s shoulders to fall from around their ears and relax their bodies and minds long enough to encounter this present reality with sanity and grace.

Today someone called it a “life raft” for their emotional well-being. However, I know that some people sign up to a class of this nature in search of reassurance about the future rather than the tools to handle it. They hope that they can listen to my talks and never meditate and yet still somehow gain that sense of grounding that only the practice can imbue. Talking about gratitude or joy to these particular people feels akin to trying to pull the bone from the dog’s mouth.

“Okay,” they might say, “I get being grounded and open. But what if [inserts potential, even likely scenario for 2025] happens?”

“Then,” I reply, “You’ll be really glad you’ve been training in being grounded and open.”

This isn’t about denying anxiety or fear. The truth is, the coming year could bring profound challenges. If it tracks with recent years, I imagine we very likely could see a further fracturing of our democracy, increased racism and anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and more. I bet basic goods will get more expensive and young people won’t feel like they can afford to buy a house. I might even gamble that people will blame each other or a mysterious “they” for such misfortunes.

And yet. And yet. And yet. Your house might be warm. Your child might be, for the most part, safe. You may even enjoy moments of quiet. I would also put good money on those things occurring too.

Instead of us getting lost in the endless “What ifs” around our own or others’ safety, I’d like to propose some unpopular “What ifs” of my own:

• What if we spent our energy cultivating presence and resilience?

• What if we actually dug in our heels and prioritized our mental health and well-being?

• What if we took care of ourselves so deeply that we became even more capable of caring for others?

These aren’t just rhetorical. Grounding ourselves in the present moment gives us strength to face the chaos, respond to injustice, and hold space for others—all without being consumed by fear.

Gratitude, in this context, feels revolutionary.

To not huddle with like-minded individuals and engage in the endless “What ifs” makes me feel like I’m in a strange counter-cultural revolution. A revolution based in showing up for others and holding space for them to go through what they need to go through. A revolution based in clarity and joy that can only be found when we enter the present moment. A revolution fed by what is going right, right now, instead of what might go wrong later on.

It’s not about denying pain or injustice. It’s about refusing to let the future steal the beauty of the present. It’s about bearing witness to suffering without adding to it.

In contrast to the newer meditators I’ve been working with, I have a number of students I meet with one-on-one every month. Some of them I have had the good pleasure of working with for six or sometimes even twelve years. These are people who, through our monthly accountability, have remained diligent in their meditation practice and really have integrated Buddhist principles into their lives.

These are the conversations where I open my mouth to speak on gratitude and they say, “You know what I’ve been thinking of?” and they share something so heart-warming from their life about how they reached across the proverbial aisle and made friends with a neighbor who didn’t think like them and how this doesn’t change the global ramifications of November 5th but it does change their relationship to their neighborhood and I. am. blown. away.

Several times this month they have ended their download to me with “I’m grateful for my practice.”

And I am too.

Sometimes, y’all, I think this meditation thing is just magic.

What I haven’t yet spoken about, though, is hope.

Hope is tricky. It’s one thing to find joy amid chaos; it’s another to say, “I have hope for the future,” when that future feels like a monster under the bed waiting for you to lower your guard.

I’m not there yet. I’m still figuring out what an open-hearted form of hope means these days. But what I can do is stand here, in this moment, with gratitude. And invite you to join me.

P.S. In the spirit of rebelling, in this case against Black Friday, I just announced a free Month of Mindfulness today