For these many things I am thankful

The holiday season is always a time of deep reflection for me. What have I done well this year? What can I do better? What have the teams of which I am a part accomplished together, and where do we need to redouble our efforts in the coming new year? And most of all, for whom and for what am I most thankful?

Today, I shall focus on answering the last question. In no particular order, and realizing I am not attempting to make an all-inclusive list, here are 10 of the people and things for whom and for which I am thankful this season:

I am thankful for cornbread dressing and ham, my holiday favorite meal with all of the side dishes. I am thankful for the wonderful women who taught me how to make it to what my family considers near perfection, and I am thankful that my family is blessed with the resources to enjoy a Thanksgiving feast. I am prayerful for those families that are not as fortunate.

I am thankful for students. The greatest satisfaction of my career has always been my close interactions with students. This semester that has taken the form of teaching a course in Shakespeare, something I have not taught in many years, and watching a new generation of students engage with the plays in meaningful, insightful, and relevant ways.

I am also thankful for the wonderful students who came before the ones entrusted to my care now, both as teacher and more broadly as president, and for the ones who will come after.

I am thankful for supportive and dedicated colleagues. Supportive does not have to mean, nor should it mean, that we all agree every day on every single point. What it should mean and does mean is that we are all firmly and fully committed to something which is greater than any one of us will ever be—WVU Potomac State College, all that it has been, is, and will be.

I am thankful for my family, defined as some of the people to whom I was born and some I have chosen and been chosen by along the way. You know who you are, and one of my flaws, I think, has never been failing to give thanks for you and to you. Let me reassert that thanks today.

I am thankful for pies and, again, the foundational women who taught me to make them. I might not earn a grade of “A” every day in everything that I do, but I can almost always earn an “A” for chocolate, pecan, buttermilk, or lemon pie, oh, and butterscotch. I shall partake in several slices during the holidays.

I am thankful for the United States of America, pulled in many directions internally and externally, still capable of being an agent for great good in spite of the many differences of opinion which seem to divide us. Our history is filled with acts of kindness and righteousness, and it is also filled with acts of prejudice and selfishness. I honor the former while admitting the latter, because I believe a full acceptance of history is essential to creating an even better future.

I predict there will once again come a time of healing and coming back together around shared ideals, but we must be an instrument of that process, not simply leave it to chance. Still, there is nowhere else I would rather be, and I do not fail to be thankful for the many generations who have made this nation possible.

I am thankful for dogs—full stop and I dare say no explanation needed. This can expand to other pets, although I am fully a dog person.

I am thankful for flowers and for those who tend the earth to help them grow.

I am thankful for cool breezes on hot days and even on cool days. There is nothing that reinvigorates me quite as much or as quickly as a blast of cool air billowing around me for just a moment. I stop and breathe it in as fully as I can, and it inspires me.

Finally, in this non-ranked, non-inclusive, but most sincere list of my holiday gratitude, I am thankful for self-reflection and the ability to be deeply honest with myself. I have always been blessed with the ability to see myself and others as we truly are and to find ways to love us anyway, both because of our best traits and even being fully aware of our less desirable ones. Self-awareness is a gift, and I reiterate my appreciation for it.

While I am cooking and eating pies and chopping celery and onions for cornbread dressing, I will reflect on those many people who are not as fortunate as I am. I will lift them up in my Thanksgiving prayers and personally recognize, with absolutely no attempt to force any spiritual view on anyone, that there but for the grace of God go I. In fact, I will also remember times in my own life when I was not nearly as fortunate as I am now. Like the cool breeze, those memories keep me grounded and give me empathy which comes only from being close enough to some of the challenges so many people in our world face to understand with some degree of lived experience how they must feel.

I see you. I see them, and I am deeply thankful for each of you.

Chris Gilmer is campus president of WVU Potomac State College.