Thank You

All seven daily haiku from Haiku Andy 11/14/22 - 11/20/22

Nov 21, 2022

In the United States, this is the week we celebrate Thanksgiving. If you strip out its dark history and even darker origin story, it's a pretty cool holiday. No pressure or competition around gift-giving. Just a time to gather and feast, and to count our shared blessings.

No matter what is going on in your life, whatever tragedy is in the news, whatever fresh mayhem seems on the verge of overwhelming civilization, find something to be thankful for. Even if its just a strange cat rubbing against your leg or a child waving at you from another car. These too are blessings, and we are lost if we let too many slip by.

Kobayashi Issa, my favorite of the classical haiku poets, lived a life of near constant bereavement and financial impoverishment. Yet even his saddest haiku are playfully uplifting, whether he's missing his "grumbling wife" or apologizing for the condition of his poor living quarters to the vermin that must infest it.

Maybe that's the secret of living well: embrace all of it, but find and amplify the good things more than the bad. Stephen Gaskin once said something like: you get more of what you pay attention to. I think that old hippie was onto something.

Thanks for listening! Here are this week's haiku, and where I sent them.