Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Matisse

It is interesting how one’s brain so reflexively jumps to what is wrong in a situation instead of what is right. Scientists call this the “negativity bias.” We are literally wired to notice and remember what is wrong with a situation, person or event and forget those that go right.

It’s a useful thing to keep in mind as we leave a day of literal “thanks giving” and emerge into Black Friday, which marks the often frenzied run-up to Christmas.

I’m ashamed to share, on the drive to my parents for Thanksgiving with my kids, my own experience with negativity bias. I did not react negatively to the rain, the road detours or the heavy traffic, but when it took Bojangles 22 minutes to bring out the breakfast biscuits we ordered for the road, I did not act admirably either.

But why? This small stressor was a far cry from those the pilgrims experienced on their first Thanksgiving (three days of quite literally giving thanks for the harvest) in the New World in 1621. And the pilgrims did so in spite of the previous winter when 58 of their original group of 102 passed away from scurvy, malnutrition or other causes. They did this all while living in crude huts along Plymouth Bay in freezing temperatures.

Set against that comparison point, my reaction to the 22-minute wait becomes even more ridiculous and embarrassing. But maybe also relatable?

It made me remember a similar experience in which I reacted differently. The year was 1990. I was living in Estonia, one of the Baltic states of what was still the Soviet Union. It was winter. It was common to walk into the few single room markets with one’s ration cards and see little more than green pickled tomatoes, fatback and pasta to buy. So when the bread factory was operating and had hot bread to sell or when a small had received a limited supply of fresh milk, the lines quickly encircled the building, hours-long standing out in the elements. One day, there was a mother holding two young children behind me. I motioned that she could move in front of me and then the people in front of me did the same, as did the people in front of them. Though I did not get milk that day, it made me happy that she did.

Stories abound in which adversity, paradoxically, forces a more generous response.

I recently read an account of the painter and sculptor Henri Matisse, who found himself bedridden from the effects of abdominal cancer at the age of 72. While many would perceive this as the death sentence it was, Matisse developed new ways of working. Using scissors and a twelve-foot bamboo cane strapped to his wrist, he cut and pasted large colorful shapes onto his walls, assemblages which have become some of his most well-known work. Matisse reportedly said, “There are always flowers for those who want to see them.”

And that bears repeating as we head into a season that 45% of Americans dread: “There are always flowers for those who want to see them.”