Happy Thanksgiving. Trying to navigate a holiday based on celebration, gatherings, food and connections while being held hostage by consumerism is hard - Reminder, it is called Thanks Giving for a reason. And now stepping in ever so boldly is the idea of stealing that cocoon of quality time away from us with tempting deals to buy discounted goods. I say lower prices all year round, raise minimum wages, close stores for Thanksgiving. I heard a Walmart commercial on TV last night "Black Friday deals starting Thursday 5pm!" WHAT? How can we allow this important day to chill be taken from us in this way? With so much going on in the world between the natural disasters, geopolitical strife, national tragedies involving guns, corporation malfeasance, it's hard to get in the spirit. I get it, so why not go out and just shop? But here we are folks, we can run from it or learn from it. So on Black Friday (incidentally it's my B'day), I'll be buying N0-THING, I prefer to join the Buy Nothing Day movement, not get caught up in the frenzy where I could possibly buy something because it's there to buy, sparkling in front of me, teasing me when actually if I stepped back I most likely would say, "Do I really need that new_______?" - (you fill in the blank).

I invite us all as humans not as human consumers to take a deep BREATH and express our dignity and full expression of who we really are by spending the day in connection with others or even in quality time with our selves. Imagine that?! Trungpa Rinpoche called breath "expression of our ordinary magic." So go out and breathe that magic, even for one day.