Have a Complex Thanksgiving
Isn’t it time that we all grew up and acknowledged that most of life isn’t simple?
Maybe this question is especially pertinent for us Americans as we celebrate our very American holiday of Thanksgiving this week. This holiday embodies some of the ugliest and most beautiful aspects of our culture. On one hand, the Thanksgiving tradition is a lie that conceals the displacement and genocide of Native Americans, the very people who taught their killers how to survive on this continent. It’s also a gluttonous feast of over-consumption and waste. On another hand, it is a uniquely secular holiday centered around the incredibly important idea of being grateful. It’s a time when we gather with family and friends when the only thing that we celebrate is the specialness of being alive and the fact that we have each other to share this life with.
I would argue that if you ignore the ugly part of Thanksgiving, you deny truth in your life, but if you ignore the beautiful part of Thanksgiving, you deny joy in your life. I wish we could have the one without the other, but I haven’t found many cases of that in my life. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from diving into a regenerative approach to wine it’s that the more you learn about something the more complex you realize things are, the more you realize there is to learn, the more you realize you don’t know…
I heard a great quote that went something like this: when you’re a child, you think your parents are gods. When you become an adolescent, you realize they’re human. When you become an adult, you forgive them for being human. When you become wise, you forgive yourself for being human.
Thanksgiving also officially marks the beginning of “the holiday season” in the US. This is a time of year when we consume frantically. We eat too much, we drink too much, and we often feel even more busy and stressed than during any other time in our normally busy and stressed lives. This busyness leads us to cut corners, to make quick decisions, to feel the necessity of not looking too deeply into things or we won’t be able to get anything done.
It reminds me of a famous quote from Bill Mollison’s Permaculture Designers Manual: “The philosophy behind permaculture is one of working with, rather than against, nature, of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action.”
As I think about regenerating wine, I’m reminded of how important time is. The speed of our lives is completely antithetical to the complexity of life. Look how patiently nature grows an ecosystem. Look how it builds complexity and diversity layer by layer over centuries. I want to make wine this way. I want to think about wine this way, and let this perspective inform the decisions I make for this vintage. I want to stop rushing to buy things when I don’t know where they came from or how they were made. I want to take the time to observe and learn about complex things carefully. I want to be slow to judge. I want to take the time to be grateful.
I just released a podcast episode in which I interviewed a young man of 39 years who has had a complex year. His name is Nick Dugmore, and he was awarded Australia’s Young Gun of Wine award at the beginning of the year. Then in August he was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer. His children are 2 and 5 years old. He’s terrified, full of joy, hopeful, depressed, grateful, and undergoing intense chemotherapy. He’s experiencing the full complexity of being alive and knowing how unexpected and fleeting life can be.
Wine is a big part of this complexity. He talks openly about how over-consumption of alcohol may have contributed to the cause of his cancer. Yet he has become even more grateful for the wine community of which he is part. In addition to knowing alcohol is a toxin, he has gained a greater appreciation for wine as a spiritual experience. Working in wine is how he met his wife, and therefore, in a sense, wine is why he has those beautiful young kids. He loves wine… maybe even more than he did prior to his diagnosis.
If we look at one side of his story, we may want to demonize alcohol and revive prohibition. This is a very simplistic approach to life.
When we look at all sides of his story it deepens our own lives, enlightens us, brings greater care and greater appreciation to our own experience with wine. Being okay with complexity, embracing the fact that we don’t have all the answers or that the answers aren’t simple, enriches our lives.
Maybe this is my way of preparing mentally for the political campaigning we’re sure to experience here in the US in the next year.
But mostly I want this to be my way of wishing you an incredibly rich Thanksgiving.
Adam
PS: If you’d like to hear Nick Dugmore’s story, it’s on the Beyond Organic Wine podcast.