This is an version of The Atlantic Daily, a e-newsletter that guides you thru the largest tales of the day, helps you uncover new concepts, and recommends the perfect in tradition. Sign up for it right here.
It’s time for us to go searching and notice, with gratitude, not solely what we now have, however what number of horrible outcomes we’ve escaped.
But first, listed here are three new tales from The Atlantic.
What Could Have Been
On Thanksgiving, we have a tendency to precise our gratitude for what we have already got. We roll off the bed, glad (if we’re so blessed) that we’re effectively and that our residence is unbroken, after which head to the dinner desk for a pleasant meal. Millions of us will try this on Thursday, and that is appropriately. But I need to problem you to search out gratitude for the disasters we’ve escaped over the previous few years. This is the thankfulness not for the nice and cozy fireplace or full stomach, however the visceral sense of reduction, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, that comes from being shot at and missed.
The historical Stoics have been nice practitioners of this type of gratitude, through which you supercharge your understanding of life by noting how a lot worse issues may very well be—and the way we’re all finally destined to die. As William B. Irvine famous in his fantastic ebook A Guide to the Good Life, the Stoics have been “cheerful and optimistic about life (even though they made it a point to spend time thinking about all the bad things that could happen to them).”
And so let’s maintain our family members and be glad about the second but additionally take a fast tour of issues that didn’t occur—and notice how lucky we Americans are at this second.
- The economic system has not collapsed. When the pandemic caught fireplace in early 2020, there have been good causes to assume we’d head for not solely a downturn, but additionally a world occasion on the size of the Great Depression. Globalization was over, we have been warned, and shortly we’d (in among the extra far-fetched situations) be combating within the streets for all the pieces from meals to microchips. Whether this nightmare was forestalled by good coverage, a resilient planetary economic system, or simply dumb luck, it didn’t occur—and you ought to be grateful, a minimum of right this moment, that regardless of inflation and dear gasoline, we’re nowhere close to the financial circumstances of even the Nineteen Seventies, a lot much less of the Thirties.
- Speaking of the pandemic: Many of us have emerged from isolation with little concern of significant illness. We reside in a world of such immense scientific know-how {that a} terrifying new virus that stored us masked and locked away from our workplaces and colleges—and households—was blunted by vaccines in a yr. Yes, COVID continues to be with us. So are many different treatable ailments. But when you’re at a dinner desk on Thursday together with your toddler nephew and aged grandmother, assume for a second about an alternate universe the place you’re nonetheless FaceTiming whereas freezer vehicles fill with our bodies that may’t be despatched to overloaded morgues.
- We are usually not dwelling beneath an authoritarian authorities. Only two years in the past, our president was an unhinged sociopath who had simply misplaced an election. He was getting briefed by retired generals and pillow magnates about crackpot schemes to declare martial legislation and seize voting machines. After his defeat, he would name on his followers to protest his loss—and the American nation, for the primary time in its historical past, failed the take a look at of the peaceable switch of energy. The insanity didn’t finish there; lots of the would-be autocrat’s acolytes ran for workplace in 2022. Most have been defeated. Our liberties—particularly these of ladies and different weak communities—stay at risk, however a minimum of for now, our skill to vote, to criticize our authorities, and to alter unjust legal guidelines stays intact.
- Finally, we aren’t dwelling by means of World War III. This may appear apparent, however that’s as a result of we now have merely develop into accustomed to the stunning truth {that a} main struggle is raging in Europe. Think about that for a second. A nuclear-armed dictatorship is attempting to rewrite historical past and threatening the peace of your entire planet. And but, steadfast Ukrainian braveness on the bottom, mixed with smart coverage in Washington and different NATO capitals, has put Russia on the defensive. Moscow’s military is in a humiliating retreat, and the battle, for right this moment, stays restricted. The containment of the struggle is little comfort to the folks of Ukraine, however as you serve dinner, look out your window on the world round you and observe, if just for a second, that you’re not listening for sirens saying the tip of all the pieces you ever knew.
Look, I don’t imply to be morbid (or, heaven forfend, overly dramatic). But this yr, along with being grateful for what we now have, let’s additionally assume for a second concerning the many ways in which our nation—and world—may have been derailed by immense risks which have thus far been held at bay. This doesn’t imply we stay in the perfect of all worlds. We nonetheless should endure disappointment and tragedies, each as people and as a society. Prominent Americans nonetheless try and stoke our nascent hatreds; mass shooters nonetheless kill our fellow residents and obliterate our sense of security. Ignorance and partisan tribalism proceed to supply extra victims for the pandemic.
Yet America survives, and even thrives. We shouldn’t spend all of our days enthusiastic about catastrophe, nevertheless it makes us higher folks (and higher residents) if we cease for a second and notice that we should always rejoice not solely what we now have gained, but additionally what we now have—thus far—been spared.
Related:
Today’s News
Dispatches
Explore all of our newsletters right here.
Evening Read
Who’s Afraid of Masih Alinejad?
By Graeme Wood
When Masih Alinejad, Public Enemy No. 1 of the Islamic Republic of Iran, met me at a resort in Lower Manhattan, she sat together with her again to a ground-floor window. Her frizzy hair was framed within the glass and visual to vacationers and workplace employees strolling by—and, it occurred to me however seemingly to not her, to any murderer who may need to take her out. The risk just isn’t theoretical. In July, police arrested Khalid Mehdiyev, of Yonkers, New York, after he was discovered prowling round Alinejad’s residence in Brooklyn with an AK-47 and almost 100 rounds of ammunition. One yr earlier than, the Department of Justice introduced that it had thwarted a plot to kidnap Alinejad, take her by sea to Venezuela, after which spirit her to Iran for imprisonment and potential execution. She now lives in hiding, however she advised me she doesn’t take into consideration threats to her security. “I don’t know why. I’m just missing this,” she stated, pointing at her head, on the absent neuroanatomical construction that causes regular folks to be afraid of being shot lifeless. “I don’t have this fear.”
More From The Atlantic
Culture Break
Read. Art Spiegelman’s Maus. What makes the ebook controversial is strictly what makes it precious.
Watch. The Menu, in theaters, gives extra meals for thought than your common shiny fall thriller.
P.S.
I notice my considerably curmudgeonly tackle happiness just isn’t for everybody. This is what comes from studying Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius, in highschool. I can not fake to be Stoic; I’m far too emotional an individual for that. But as a teen within the shallow, plastic Nineteen Seventies, I discovered Stoic considering interesting, and I nonetheless do. If you’d like a far hotter and extra partaking view on discovering larger satisfaction in your each day existence, nonetheless, learn my colleague Arthur Brooks, who writes the Atlantic column “How to Build a Life.” I’ve by no means met Arthur, however I can inform he’s a nicer particular person than I’m, and I learn him attentively on all the pieces from marriage to expertise. You ought to too.
The Daily might be again tomorrow with an interview with Bushra Seddique, a younger Afghan journalist who fled the Taliban final yr and is now an editorial fellow at The Atlantic. After that, we are going to take a break till Monday, once I might be again right here with you. I want you a stunning—and gratitude-filled—Thanksgiving.
—Tom
Isabel Fattal contributed to this article.