As the official gratitude holiday, Thanksgiving comes with some hefty expectations for feeling grateful, mightily so. It’s a good thing to do — good for the head, good for the heart and for the good of all, which science has proven beyond doubt.

But there can be an underside to gratitude when used as a way to sidestep, deny, or otherwise block out the truth of reality and the places where your soul is hurting. The Stockdale Paradox, so named after Admiral James Stockdale, points to the ultimately hollow benefit of refusing to acknowledge reality. During the Vietnam War, Admiral Stockdale was taken prisoner and held in the same Hanoi prison as Senator John McCain. The prisoners who didn’t make it out alive were the unrealistically optimistic ones who told themselves they’d be out by Easter. Okay, not by Easter but by Thanksgiving. Okay, not Thanksgiving, then by Christmas, for sure. And so on and so forth until their spirit gave up and died.

What sustained Stockdale during his imprisonment is what he described as a stubborn kind of optimism, one he held onto while in full awareness of the torture and dreadful circumstances he was in. But what was there to be optimistic about? His determination to prevail. He would prevail by turning in the direction of the good.

Using gratitude as a strategy to paper over difficulty can backfire while wise gratitude holding the whole of reality can actually help to heal the hard. I know some of you out there are probably struggling with a very hard challenge right in the midst of all this celebration and may not be in a festive spirit. For others, the holiday season may carry a freight of grief for one reason or another. Letting what is painful have its place while pointing yourself in the direction of the good at hand can turn a dreaded holiday into a day of simple gratitude, gratitude being just another word for love.

To the good at hand. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you,

E