Thanksgiving 2020

Anything with 2020 in it automatically brings up Covid and all the shifts and downright big changes that have occurred in our lives in the last 9 months. Everything familiar simply has changed so much regardless of where you happen to be in the world.

Thanksgiving is probably one of the most ‘traditional’ holidays in the United States. Many of us can recall turkey dinners that evoke memories of family get-togethers over the years or some kind of celebration around a meal be it large or small. Some family members were there, others were not.

This year, other than a dinner celebrating everything we’re thankful for, you can’t help but focus on what’s changed. School functions very differently, grocery shopping is an event to plan for ahead of time to make sure you get everything you need in one trip, last-minute runs to the shopping center – not really an option for many of us. Today there doesn’t seem to be anything that resembles a past Thanksgiving holiday except maybe the one you had to spend by yourself as a young adult when you first made it out into the big world beyond the familiar and family.

Because so much has changed in how we live every day and will likely change again before long, we have an opportunity to turn our heads away from all that looks different to consider what a new future might look like. Instead of focusing on the gap of how things aren’t the same, look at the future from the perspective of what you would like to see and experience in the world.

At no time in the past have we had the opportunity to imagine a new future because all of the ways we’ve done things before are gone. If you look at the world of work, people have in short order had to figure out how to get their work done, serve their customers, take care of employees’ health and safety all while grasping what a pandemic means to them personally.

There are very few things we do today that have not changed in some way. The silver lining is that now when you want to try something different, people are up for it. After all, we’ve all experienced disruption in many parts of our lives, what’s something else. Think about it, the past opinions, perspectives, and judgments just don’t really matter as they did.

With our past thinking patterns in the rearview mirror, maybe Thanksgiving 2020 is the chance to really look at the open road in front of us and envision the future we want and not settle for what we might have had to because ‘it’s always been done that way.’

Tradition can limit our thinking and ability to visualize something different. Thanksgiving 2020 could be the day you choose to create a new future for yourself.