Thanksgiving in Dark Times

By Jim Miller 

I spent last week in the hospital after I awoke coughing and spitting up enough blood to prompt a 3AM trip to the emergency room.  After a litany of tests, two bronchoscopies, dozens of IV bags of antibiotics and antifungal medications, I stopped expelling fresh blood and was released to go home and monitor the situation as my empirical treatment continues.  

Although they have eliminated many possible infections as a cause, the medical team is unclear as to the precise trigger for my current condition, and my status as an immunocompromised liver transplant patient makes me vulnerable to a host of common ailments that most people easily fight off.  Apparently, my recent brushes with death and severe disability were not enough.  More challenges await.  

Thus, I am left to chart uncertain waters, hoping that they discover what is ailing me and whether I need another treatment that entails a small but severe level of risk to my health.  As of this writing, I am doing well at home, but, as I lay in bed in the hospital, alone in the wee hours, hooked up to machines while I pondered my fate, I have sat with deep uncertainty.  While doing so, I have done my best to navigate the emotional terrain, running to the darkest of places and back.  

There is nothing like a lonely hospital room in the hours before dawn populated with the sounds of your neighbors’ moans and screams along with the relentless beeping of various types of medical machinery to set your mind wandering toward the grimmest of outcomes.  

In a world driven by competitive individualism and the shallow mantras of “self-care,” we are encouraged to take a selective and self-centered approach to our pain. But such facile narcissism is a dead end.  It would be quite easy to bemoan my fate and surrender to despair, but I can’t ever get to “why me?” because the clear answer is “why not me?”  

Newsflash: we are all designed to suffer and die.

In fact, far worse fates afflict people every second of every day, and I am quite privileged to even have access to health care and not be poor enough to have to worry about it.  Scores of other human beings in less fortunate circumstances fare far worse.  

All I need to do is turn on the TV to the BBC news or scroll the newsfeed on my iPhone to see images of Palestinian children dying in Gaza where hospitals are a battleground, the ongoing horrors from the war in Ukraine, the nightmare that is Syria, the largely untold stories of renewed genocide across the globe, and the ten percent of the world’s population who go to bed hungry every night.  

Seen from outside of the realm of the endless rhetorical warfare that seeks to dehumanize and rank who is deserving of our concern and who is not, lies the basic fact of shared human agony. There are no worthy or unworthy victims, only mourning spouses, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, children, and lovers. 

It goes on and on and has throughout human history.  That’s why the first noble truth of the Buddhists and the primary truth of most serious religions or philosophies is that life is suffering.  

Hence, when we encounter our own afflictions, perhaps the most healing response is to see our pain as part of everyone’s pain.  That’s why, as Cornel West has said, “justice is what love looks like in public.”  We are bound by suffering, and recognizing the pain of the other is, paradoxically, the best way to ease one’s own.  

This simple realization makes our hardest moments courage teachers.  

During my latest week in the hospital, I heard more wails of suffering, color coded alerts that meant people were dying or that healthcare workers were under assault.  It was, as is usual, hard to sleep and with each day, one loses a bit more strength and equanimity.  

In response, I tried, however imperfectly, to be kind to those caring for me, encouraged the younger folks working part time to keep going to school, and counseled the older folks to enjoy their pending retirements.  And, paradoxically, the more I focused on other people, the easier it was for me to get accustomed to my new level of uncertainty on top of uncertainty. 

We live in a world threatened by catastrophic climate change, intensifying warfare, hunger, and health crises.  Our own personal challenges are meaningless outside of the context of this larger human picture that unites us with all those others also bearing witness to the radical uncertainty of not just our age, but of the entire history of the human condition.  

We don’t know how many days or even moments we have left, ever, despite our vainglorious thoughts otherwise.  There is no insurance plan against death and, despite millions of dollars’ worth of propaganda to the contrary, we can’t buy our way out of it on Black Friday either.

Thus, this Thanksgiving, I am grateful for the love and kindness of others and the efforts of those simply trying to do right without any expectation of outcome or praise.  I try not to hope for anything anymore, but, instead, lean into the present moment, the only one we have, and hold onto it closely.  Just being alive is a wonder to behold--every second, each breath, every sight, taste, and touch.  Every moment we are dying and becoming. Roll with it; surrender to it. 

Step by step, we kiss the earth with our feet.