Mr. Maslow and Thanksgiving

What I thought about when listening to everyone gathered around the Thanksgiving dinner table expressing their thoughts about what they are thankful for- that Mr. Maslow was on to something with his hierarchy of needs.

Lauren is missing from this picture- unfortunately she just left when we finally thought to get out the camera...

The young adults gave thanks for having their basic needs met, and then moved on up the pyramid to mention personal growth through education and self-expression. Making my heart full and proud (that they realize the privilege) and happy.

Of course, if you look closely, you notice one of the physiological needs is sleep...and I suspect that they are all sleep-deprived on a regular basis, but that's not my point. Nor do they have security of employment yet and there is work to do on the esteem part for all of us...

So I talked about being thankful that we had the opportunity for life-long personal growth. At least, for now. Because things can change. Fluctuate. Loved-ones can die. We talked about that too. My girls recently lost a dear friend in a car accident, and last year the same happened with the husband and father of a family dear to us.

Mostly, there was shared joy and games and laughter and discussions and of course food. Now the refrigerator is less full and the house is slowly emptying as well. Yesterday Stephen had to catch a very early flight. Later in the day we brought Emma to Cincinnati so she could board a bus to take her back to NYC. Vera and Jake are driving back soonish and then Thijs will leave tonight.

 
I can clean the house and get back to making my Christmas presents. My love and I hung the lights yesterday too- we are almost like an all-american family. ;-)

Tomorrow is back to work where I meet a lot of people who are struggling on a daily basis with getting their family's very basic needs met. And as a society, we have a LOT of work to do to get to 'morality, lack of prejudice'.