Thanksgiving weekend was full of so much to do that I haven’t had time to mention the many things for which I’m thankful this year.
First, and most obviously, I’m thankful for Erin. Erin is the kindest, most loving, hardworking, caring, thoughtful woman in the world—not to mention awfully pretty. I am grateful for her joyful spirit and her energy, and for the strength that she often doesn’t realize she has. I’m grateful for a girlfriend who’s not afraid to disagree with me, and who respects me and loves me, and is faithful, and who shows me every day how lucky I am to love her in return. I’m grateful for the amazing times we’ve spent together, from Newport Beach to P.J.’s to petting the baby cows at Davis and sitting on the floor at the Cosmic Café. I’m thankful for her showing me every day what a good person really is.
I’m grateful for my friends—for the Kellys, who took me to see John Fogerty and have been so kind to me for so many years; for Scott, the closest thing to a brother I have. I’m grateful for my parents for being so very patient with me for so long. I’m grateful for the many weblog friends I have, many of whom I’ve never met. I’m grateful to my colleagues, both at PLF and other organizations, who work so hard for freedom. I’m grateful for brilliant minds and astonishing talent and intense dedication. I’m grateful for beauty and for elegance and for plain old fun.
You know, there’s a passage in Atlas Shrugged about Thanksgiving:
The roast turkey had cost $30. The champagne had cost $25. The lace tablecloth, a cobweb of grapes and vine leaves iridescent in the candlelight, had cost $2,000. The dinner service , with an artist’s design burned in blue and gold into a translucent white china, had cost $2,500. The silverware…had cost $3,000. But it was held to be unspiritual to think of money and of what money represented.
Well, I for one am thankful for big evil greedy corporations and cold calculating reason. I’m grateful for good music and good books and good food and good science and good art, and for quiet moments with loved ones. I’m thankful for visionaries who put their minds and their wealth into pursuing their dreams, by hard work—not asking for a handout, but just for a chance to work hard to support themselves and their families. I’m grateful for their freedom to do so. And I’m thankful for the people who have chosen to risk—and lose—their lives for freedom, even in the face of those who wrongly think other things are more important than freedom. I’m grateful for those who fought and won the Revolution, and the Civil War, and the World Wars and the Cold War, and thereby kept this country, and the people I love, free. I’m even grateful for the pain.
There are a great many things for which I’m thankful—far more than I could mention here. Mostly I’m grateful for moments that I try hard not to let slip past me unnoticed. The way Erin moves her head when she hears a song she likes; the way Huckleberry drags himself across the carpet with his front claws; the way the air feels in your lungs when it’s crisp autumn outside; the way the woodpeckers look on the tree in my front yard. Without them, life would be a drudgery.
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