Thanksgiving

The Americans are about to celebrate Thanksgiving. This is a really important holiday for them; more so I think than Christmas. I don’t know a heck of a lot about the tradition – but I do know that they eat pumpkin pie and turkey. And every time I think of turkey these days I am reminded of Nassim Taleb’s turkey graph from his book The Black Swan (*see below).

I do however know, that Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks. This part of the tradition is very appealing. Isn’t it nice to have a special day when we can all give thanks for the people in our lives, the things we have, the things we have done and will have the means to still do.? I think it is wonderful that this is an opportunity to also say thank you to the people around us who make our lives easier, who love us (warts and all), make us laugh, who are always there for us.

But, we don’t have to wait for “a thanksgiving day” to say thank you. There is a lot of research around at the moment that says that you will be much, much happier if you practice gratitude, understand being grateful and express your appreciation.

Thanksgiving in the US is celebrated on the 4th Thursday in November. – which is the 26th November this year. Co-incidentally – we are having our Poker Club Christmas dinner that night – a nice time to be thankful for good friends, lots of laughs and some very bad poker that has been played.

*The Turkey Graph : paraphrased by me

Taleb says: imagine a turkey that is kept in a special pen and it gets fed every day a certain time and receives a certain type and amount of food. This happens every day for 1000 days. And on the 1001st day some guy comes into the pen, grabs the turkey and chops its head off. Moral of the story: you can’t predict the future from past known behaviors/activities. Liz’s moral:- don’t get stuck with what has happened in the past and past experiences, move on, enjoy the present and make your future great.