Thanksgiving '07: Happy Birthday to Me

Thanksgiving was supposedly started as a feast and joyous celebration of making it through another year, of acknowledging the toil and strife and the people that helped us along the way. Lincoln (a personal favorite) made it an official holiday and although it originally was August 6, it now falls in November and this year on my birthday. I am grateful to be born. Life is precious. I am the mother of two adopted children so birth and and the giving of life is monumental in my home despite it's political toolmaking.

I am grateful to my mother for laboring on my behalf despite her secret desire to get back into her size 17-inch waist that I stretched out.

I am grateful to her and my father and my step-father's patience and guidance and complete disregard.

I am grateful that there is life out there for someone who isn't a scholar. I wear my combined 760 SAT scores like a medal around my neck that ANYONE can make it despite being a round, square, gay, alcoholic, liberal, pampered peg in the proverbial square hole of what is the norm.

I am grateful that I am aware of the terrible legacy this generation has created and the wonderful technology that support this apathy.

I am grateful that someone wanted to share his life/heart/mind with me and that we have been able to raise our children in an attempt at our own family and not that we just perpetuated our own family histories.

I am grateful to have arrested and faced down my alcoholism and drug dependency and that my children and their children will not see me in an altered state, other than Idaho.

I am grateful for my friends who choose to know me and secretly see my snarky side and still let me be part of their lives. I am grateful that my children appreciate that I am trying, that I am FAR from perfect (a terrible name for a movie BTW) that I am locating myself while trying to help them locate themselves. I am grateful that there is love around me from them.

I am grateful that I live around trees, that there are books and music and photographs and movies and yes, I am grateful that there is musical theater. I am grateful that my dogs trust me. I am grateful that I trust me.

I am grateful that I can question our government and HATE the policies it is enforcing in my name and still love our country and its great promise. I am grateful to be alive and aware and up at 5a.m. on my birthday. As I was taught or read in the tabloids, I can't remember, that giving is better than receiving I get to give you all a gift. It is one of MY favorite things and it is free:

"Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man (and woman). Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man. And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost."

- John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Birthday, Tell the Truth, Make Good Choices.

Comments

[JanSP1971]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAMIE!!!!!!!!!

[alvdh1]

How refreshing to hear Jamie write something so pure from the heart in an era of unprecedented mind control which has been directed from the two bastions of intolerance- religion and the Republican party.

They cringe at the thought of free will and thought. Inspired by group think, they would sooner tell you to trust us than to hear a new idea or new way of doing something from an individual. This is their plan for control borne out of the German SS, the Russian KGB or Mao's Red Book.

Thanks for reminding everyone that they were given a mind to think with and inspiring them to use it.

[bushlies]

Great article, Jamie...and, yes, my husband still thinks you're HOT!

[OhgReaTone]

I am grateful that I am not diving in dumpsters for food - but that phenomenon is gaining respect with middle America as corporate waste leaves products laying around for the taking.
Ohg.
http://thefiresidepost.com/2007/11/24/maslow-and-dumpster-diving/

[HTracy]

Wow, for a combined 760 SAT score, this blog entry is brilliantly written. Makes me wonder about the saliency of SAT scores. Thanks for slicing through the crud and delivering some clarity.

[MichelleMauceri]

Happy birthday Ms. Curtis, You are inspiring and intelligent. And your honesty is very refreshing. You come across very grounded. I like that about you. I loved the quote from John Steinbeck you added. The human mind truly is the most valuable thing in the world.

What I am grateful for...although my father died of cancer 12 years ago, and I still miss him terribly, I am grateful to have spent the time I did with him. I am grateful that my best friend (my mother) is still with me. I’m also grateful to be alive and to still have my 12-year-old dog, who despite her aging body still thinks she’s a puppy.

[Princesspeach]

Awesome post, and Happy Birthday, Jamie!

[rmhitchens]

Thank YOU for many things, not least "A Fish Called Wanda."

[asinineus]

I so crave and appreciate the authentic, gut honesty in this blog. I have now shared this Steinbeck quote with everyone in my email address book as the context seems to be the center of many discussions among friends and colleagues.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Happy Birthday. :)

Live. Love. Laugh.

~b.

[newworldman777]

Well, happy B'day, Jamie. I've been enjoying yer movies since whenever. We were born in the same year, so I measure my own aging by observing yours, on screen. Keep looking young, so that hopefully, I will also.

[smugglerdurant]

Thanks for your easy openness. Always admired your pioneer spirit. If you're ever looking for a new tool in your personal quest - check out EFT - http://www.emofree.com. Consider it a belated bday present! ;)

[llozano]

I too am grateful. It is what keeps me from going completely insane and from falling into despair and hopelessness. I am blessed that I can see beyond some of the "ugliness" of this world and continue to see the possibilities and the hope for a better world. Being in recovery myself I have been in "hell" so whatever this world throws my way I have been given the tools and the experience to work through it and use it as an opportunity to work on changing it. I heard you speak once before and I was inspired by your honesty and self-deprecating manner. You are a beautiful person. Happy birthday.

[mcnary]

I am thankful that everyday that I get up is one day less of Bush on my shoe, Jan 20th 2009 is party party time.
Happy birthday Jamie, still one of the hottest babes in Hollywood.
The best advice I ever got "Never sleep on the ground in a month with an "R" in it.

[racom]

"I am grateful that I can question our government and HATE the policies it is enforcing in my name and still love our country and its great promise."

I have to wonder how many citizens of the old Soviet Union said the same thing.

[saludevil]

Happy Birthday, Jamie! I'm glad you were able to help 2 children by adopting them but I can't be thankful for my grandson who was stolen by child services for pure greed. His life is being destroyed by a drug addicted foster woman. I had a house full of our loving family on thaksgiving day but the absence of my grandson was sadly felt by all. How can I be thankful when my flesh and blood has been stolen by a self serving government?