How Thanksgiving Keeps You Alive (SPOILER: It's not just the food...)
One of my clients is a ten year old boy. I caught up with his guardian yesterday and learned that they had a Thanksgiving "brunch" this morning instead of a dinner to accommodate another plan with family friends. The guardian mentioned it was the first year the day's schedule was different, but we discussed that the most important thing was the time spent together, no matter the time of day.
To whatever varying degrees for the 8 billion people around the world, connections with others sustain us more than toll house pie ever could (though toll house pie is delicious).
Stick with me...
It is human nature to survive. We are wired with an instinct to do whatever possible to stay alive.
A little known fact about Thanksgiving is that it affects our personal survival a lot more than just offering decadent food. Its deepest impact is not about the food at all.
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Let's start from the beginning:
Because we have a superpowered turbo alarm system in our DNA that warns us of threats to our survival, the emotional level of our brain presents that alarm as a fear of death. That fear protects us from harm and helps us learn both what a threat is and how to avoid one in the future.
Even though we each possess our own powerful drive to out-survive everyone else, aka the "survival of the fittest", competitive, self-preservation mentality, the only reason why we humans have survived made it this long is because we learned early that it would behoove us to band together and form tribes in order to defend ourselves against the raw, wild world.
In so doing, we made homes, extended families, and strengths based social systems so that everyone contributes to the overall community. Trust that our friends were safe, our ancestors were able to venture further and further away from home to explore the unknown landscape's reach and ultimately establish more communities.
We evolved through the eons via our connection with other humans.
Fast forward a super long time, and you will find that this same tribal association is why we form teams in so many areas of modern life. We can only succeed in building a house, for instance, if we have a tribe of people who possess the various skills needed to complete the house. As a squad, they finish a job, which pays them money, which gets them food, which helps them survive.
Similarly, I have written much about the importance of networking and support systems in that we can achieve so much more than we can fathom on our own when we connect with others and leverage the power of a tribe for whatever goal we set.
Whenever we achieve something meaningful to us, our brains AUTOMATICALLY create an experience of humility when the neurofeedback makes it known that something was accomplished. No matter how arrogant a person may be, the humility presents itself as a flash of gratitude for the accomplishment.
Gratitude for another small assurance of survival.
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Gratitude is obviously the hallmark of celebrating Thanksgiving. Despite the sad history of our effect on Native American populations, the original Thanksgiving was simply an act of settlers getting together and expressing the aforementioned Survival Gratitude to the other members of their tribe, humble that they were alive and that they had the food in front of them.
Tony Robbins often reiterates that "it is impossible to be afraid when you are grateful."
When you feel grateful, you recognize something that was successful. We use resourcefulness to be successful. We acquire resources (knowledge, tools, money, etc.) via our connections with other people.
Our connection with others therefore offers us trust in our ability to accomplish our goals and promote our survival.
As a result, that trust in our ability to survive decreases the magnitude of our fear of death.
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If you have stuck with me this far, let's loop it back to today. All holidays are about celebrating something that affects large populations of people. As such, every holiday celebrates the connection between human beings.
So today, as you eat a ton of food and converse with friends, family, or passersby, remember that that exact connection is what keeps you alive, and for that let's all be thankful.
Together.
Happy thanksgiving, everyone.
