Around this time of year, one of the common memes is a list of things for which to be thankful. I could do that too, but I’m thinking a little bigger than that. Specifically, I’m back to thinking about the difference in ideological mindsets. One of my homeboys likes to challenge me on the degree to which our lives are determined by our choices. To the extent that I could be labled a conservative (and that’s a limited extent), it’s because I firmly believe that our situations are primarily a result of our own choices, both active and passive. That is, some things happen to us because of a positive or negative choice that we made (positive and negative in this simply meaning ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ not ‘good’ and ‘bad’); some things happen because of choice we didn’t make. If I had to assign a numerical value, I’d say that our choices account for 75% of our circumstances. No science behind the number, it’s just a number. But for the sake of argument, let’s say it’s valid. That other 25%, while a much smaller value, is very significant. That’s where I’d like to put the focus on the thankfulness for a while.

Implicit in the conservative mindset is the ‘I can handle my own business’ mindset. I would probably even go so far as to argue that it’s a quintessentially American mindset; it’s one of the underpinnings for rugged individualism. I ain’t gon’ lie, I’m right on board with it, especially when it comes to the individual vis-a-vis the government. For the most part, I don’t believe that even when the willingness to do the right thing is present, the government is the most effective entity at effecting the types of change we’d like to see. Especially in the Black community. Some things are better done in a bureaucratic structure. Most things are not. Where I differ from most conservatives is that I don’t take that agovernmental very far. “The government that governs best governs least?” Maybe. Depends on the characters in the government and what types of things they’re trying to apply the least governance to. All that’s just to say that I firmly believe in the idea that we shape our own destinies. But that’s not all there is to it.

One category of things that many people are not cognizent enough to be thankful for is things that could have happened but didn’t. I think of this specifically when I talk to some of my more conservative brethren who ride what I’d consider to be hard on the illogical choices that people make. Obviously, it’s impossible to know what one person would do in another person’s circumstances, but what I personally try to always keep in mind is that I’m probably not as far from being the person that I critique as I like to think I am. That tempers my critique a lot.

For instance, in general, I have no sympathy for drug dealers, gang bangers, and thugs in general. The choice-outcome connection is too clear in their case to ignore. Moreover, because I’ve been at the point of having to make the decision to engage in those very activities, I can speak with first-hand knowledge about the choice. At the same time, my self-righteousness has to be tempered by the fact that even with being in the same general circumstances, we’re approaching it from different perspectives. Yeah, I had the opportunity to do that stuff, but I knew even before the choice presented itself that those activities didn’t mesh with the person I see myself to be. If I had self-identified as a thug in the first place, when it came time to make those same decisions, I might have chosen differently because that’s how I saw myself. But there’s still a level of choice involved there, even if it’s not necessarily conscious. So let’s move on.

It seems like every few months, there’s a publicized case of some man (usually Black) who gets exonerated after 20+ years in prison for a capital crime that he didn’t commit. People can spout all the platitudes they want about ‘it’s not what happens to you, it’s how you react to it,’ but that’s quite a bit about what happens TO you. It’s not his decisions that put him in jail, it’s nothing that has anything to do with him. It’s just that he was there. My thing is this: I’m always, always, always conscious of the fact that that could be me. Yeah, the majority of our circumstances are self-inflicted, for better or worse. But some of them aren’t. I can’t speak for everybody, but I can say that I’ve done some stuff that could have gone way wrong and gotten me dead with the quickness. I also know that some of the situations a lot of brothers experience with the police are situations I’ve never had to deal with. I mean, yeah, I’ve been stopped unnecessarily before, but one of those times, I was actually lost, so I needed the police. And even in the other cases, I’ve never been physically accosted or even talked to harshly. Where lots and lots of brothers have horror stories about the police, I don’t. Surely, some of that is because of the way I comport myself when I’ve been stopped, but I don’t doubt that some of it is also because I was fortunate enough to get the right officer at the right time.

So this Thanksgiving, while we’re being thankful for all we have and all the good things that have happened to us, let’s remember to be thankful for the things that could’ve happened to us but didn’t. And let’s try to maintain the humility of thankfulness when it comes to dealing with people who haven’t had the same fortunate circumstances that we’ve had — and even the ones who have and have made knuckleheaded decisions all along the way. Cuz the truth is, we’ve all made some knuckleheaded decisions, some folks just hafta pay more for them.

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