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Thanksgiving and being thankful.

Thanksgiving and being thankful.

I am thankful for many things, this year. I’m thankful for a job, for a warm bed and a roof that doesn’t leak. I’m thankful for my friends, even the ones that don’t always live up to expectations and promises. I am thankful for living in a free country and a refrigerator that has food and a working control knob. But mostly I’m thankful for a quiet living room, a Mac w/ a wireless router, and a forty-eight hour marathon of West Wing on Bravo.

This show has become such a religion to me, and aparently a phanatical group of other people around the world. (My Canadian friend watches it relentlessly and it was recently plugged on the Brit-Flick “Love Actually”–set in London.) I’m very thankful to call Martin Sheen my president and I am thankful that once a week I can snuggle up on the couch with Toby, Josh, Leo, Abby, CJ, Charlie and Jed and catch a glimpse of life in a bigger and more grand scale than I can ever imagine in my own art.

That’s what it is — art. It is the selective recreation of a reality, as Aristotle defined art. With that said, it’s more than even that. It is a glimpse of not what life is like in the White House, but what it *could be* like. These are basically good people who are doing what they think is right. It doesn’t always work out well, but they try.

Maybe that’s what we’re looking for, those of us who watch this show. And that’s why it’s the thing for which I’m most thankful. I’m thankful that I live in a nation where this, while not likely, is at least possible.

Happy Thanksgiving