Thanksgiving Day 2010: The Balanced Life
Three of my four children and their families will not join me around the holiday table this Thanksgiving, nor will I be sitting around theirs. The fourth lives with me, so fortunately she and her family will be here. I miss the family dinners and conversations we all once had around my big century-old 52-inch round table, but life has changed. It is a different world today. Norman Rockwell's Thanksgiving portrait notwithstanding, Thanksgiving is no longer "a whole-family" holiday for me and for many of us, nor has it been for some time. In truth, married children have always had to share the holiday with both families, if they are able to join them at all. Jobs that have moved workers around the country and beyond changed the twentieth century workforce into a mobile society. So what's the big deal?
We've lost something precious in the chase to find better jobs and good livable incomes. Loving families that nurture one another find it harder and harder to keep those bonds strong and healthy across blind and distant miles. Let's face it: Facebook just cannot take the place of live hugs and kisses and the sheer joy of just "being there" with loved ones. People are finding various ways of filling that void. Phone calls and Skype transmissions send faces and voices across the miles. Personal friendships fill the void for many. Church often becomes a means of building close friendships in a new community. For some, church has become "a second family." And some turn the table around on Thanksgiving Day and help organizations serve a community dinner for the poor and lonely.
A recent TV program on China's emerging middle class portrayed adult children leaving behind their rural homes and parents--permanently, they say--for a job in the big cities that has brought them an improved quality of life. Many of them send money home. One cannot find fault with any of that. Yet I feel sad for what they are losing. Somewhere we and they must find a balance between making money and nurturing family love. My father-in-law, an electrical engineer with Michigan Bell Telephone Company, once turned down a chance to move from a mid-sized city to a higher paying job in Detroit and an opportunity to move higher up the executive ladder. He said no. No to leaving a community closer to his extended family. No to leaving an active volunteer life with the Boy Scouts. No to his wife having to leave her treasured church and community service work. No to leaving a life that was already doing a great job for him and his family. He never got another promotion, but it didn't matter. He had found good balance in his life. Let's hope that will happen with the emerging nations who are still struggling today.
The God who was with us years ago is still with us, wherever we join hands around the Thanksgiving table. May he help all of us in America and elsewhere to find good balance in our lives,
Margaret
