Belated Thanksgiving Gratitude

Although the past few weeks (really, the past many years) have been full of personal challenges and great failures for me, they have also been full of some triumphs. Still, it's becoming difficult for me to envision a time when there's less struggle, as that has become the norm rather than a short-lived exception.

That being said, I've been thinking, annoyedly, about something for a few weeks now:  I am incredibly thankful for my creative life and the community of incredibly imaginative people that have always gathered around me. In my personal and professional travels, I have met a lot of people who are an affront to creatives everywhere, taking advantage of them financially as well as taking advantage of their dreams and believing them to be "silly" and misguided in their principles (mostly because they do not understand what it means to create something beautiful, nor do they value what creative products add to the world, or what the world would really look like without them). I recently even met someone unpleasant who doesn't like music (he admitted he only downloads music in the Billboard Top 10, and only so other people think he is "normal") and believes that television, film, theatre and other cultural phenomenon is actually propaganda for a specific liberal political and philosophical agenda and conspiracy. 

Understandably, my mind was blown. His existence is an attack on everything I hold dear and everything that has supported me emotionally and financially my entire life and entirely shaped the person I am.

Ultimately, I am thankful that these people will never have the ability to shape our world. And there are people who would probably disagree with me, but they clearly just haven't looked at history and what creates lovely revolutions, magnificent changes of heart, new inventions and the change and progress that keeps the world interesting.

Note to the unbelievers:  Imagination always wins in the end.