With American Thanksgiving looming on the calendar, many are planning their menus and purchasing ingredients for the annual holiday feast. Few consider how the traditional menu items reflect the American spirit.
For some reason we have decided that on Thanksgiving we would have turkey and stuffing with cranberry dressing. Turkeys are impossible to cook properly, cranberries are the sourest of all the fall fruits we could pick, and to quote a well know TV celebrity chef, stuffing is evil. Somehow, this terrible trio became the standard for our most family-centric holiday.
Eventually we learned how to prep that bird so it stayed juicy throughout cooking, figured out how to sweeten those bog berries, and learned that you could make a stuffing that cooked all the way through when you do it in Pyrex rather than poultry. The imperfections guided our practices to make a new normal.
Weird foods of then became banquet staples of now. A need was found to improve something and so someone did. Not unlike the evolution of many things in our lives.
Some people may consider them too prolific, but none will deny cell phones have changed our lives. Excluding all the other tasks a smart phone can take on, just the calling process has improved life. No more trying to find a phone and then finding a dime and later a quarter to use it when you have car trouble. No more dialing nine out of ten numbers before making that fatal finger slip and having to start all over. Entire families now are connected giving parents less anxious moments on pep-rally bonfire night.
GPS services have decidedly changed travel, even travel just across town for a doctor appointment. Extensive travel used to mean national or state atlases that give too little detail, or city maps that went overboard on specifics. Even modern GPS units have been supplanted by smart phone map apps that can pinpoint a specific address while offering suggestions to avoid traffic, construction areas, and accidents or other road hazards.
The medical world is filled with examples of improvements over the past half-century, many now so commonplace we cannot imagine ever not having them. Those with vision problems correct them with contact lenses but only while waiting vision-correction surgery. Eyeglasses aren’t the only things disappearing from young faces. Invisible braces now correct orthodontic irregularities faster than old-fashioned metal braces and are infinitely more comfortable and, as the name suggests, nearly invisible.
There are so many examples. The ones that are the hardest to call to mind are the ones that most significantly changed our ways of living and of thinking. City-wide water supply and treatment facilities. Safe food handling and storage practices. Immunizations. Safe power generation and reliable communication standard. These are the proofs that necessity indeed is the mother of invention.
Improvement isn’t possible until we are willing to admit that we aren’t perfect. But once we do, there is no limit to the amount of improvement that is possible, improving even on yesterday’s improvements.
Imperfections guided our practices to make a new normal. Next week when you give your thanks for all you have, remember the things you never think of, and offer a word of thanks for those who recognize how the imperfect doesn’t have to stay that way, even the imperfections within us.
This is timely and well-said. We too often forget the small things that have made massive changes in our lives for good, and our lack of gratitude is something we've come to accept--complaining, unrealistic expectations, entitlement, demands. Rather than seeing the amazing gifts around us and being grateful, it's too easy to whine about what we don't have. This was so encouraging in the reminders of the small things that have made our lives better--GPS (I have no sense of direction), immunizations, clean water from the tap, food availability even in off seasons. I appreciate your emphasis on being thankful--I'm thankful for the two of you.