If You Read Just One Thanksgiving Message - No Really! - A Message From My Heart

This is a post to say thank you to all of my friends, colleagues, and connections who make life so much more interesting, fun, challenging, and, ultimately, successful. When I first joined LinkedIn, I was unsure as to how to post, what to post, how often post, with whom to connect. Basically, I saw a shiny tool and felt that if I could learn how to use it properly, I could build something useful. Maybe even beneficial. I never considered wonderful.

I am still learning. That much is evident to anyone who interacts with me here regularly, whether through posts, reactions, comments, DMs, or even offline discussions. I try very hard to keep my posts either relevant, informative, funny, passionate – ideally, all of the above. Sometimes I succeed; sometimes I don’t. But my intentions are always the best, and I hope that comes across.

Factual accuracy is something I try very hard to ensure in my posts. As the saying goes, facts don’t care about your feelings, and sometimes those facts irritate people. Sometimes those facts irritate me. That’s okay, as long as I’m getting the facts right. But once in a while, I screw up, and I am grateful to those who call me on it and correct me. I’m not infallible – I only play an infallible character on LinkedIn! But fact-checking is difficult sometimes, as is evidenced by how often professional fact checking organizations get it wrong. (It's unbelievable how often!) I try to utilize facts from sources I trust, from appropriate books and subject experts to people or organizations that I’ve found to be reliable. But, as Abraham Lincoln famously said, “You can’t trust everything you read on the internet.”

I am not a reporter. I am not a journalist. I am not a dispassionate news aggregator, whatever that is. I am not a paid influencer. I have opinions, often strong ones. Sometimes people have opinions that differ with mine. That’s okay – they are allowed to be wrong.  Every once in a while, I might change someone’s opinion. And every once in a much longer while, someone might change mine.

But I digress. This post is about giving thanks. So here goes.

I am thankful I live in the United States of America, the most successful and world-benefitting country ever to exist. The country isn’t perfect – and never will be - but as one of the truest expressions ever uttered goes, perfection is the enemy of progress. And how can you not be thankful to live in country with so much room for progress! (That's progress with a small p, by the way.)

I am thankful I live in a democratic republic, even though rule by the majority often produces policies and results I vehemently oppose. I am thankful that we hold regular elections, which are the bedrock of any democracy, and which provide ongoing opportunities to adjust course. (And contrary to what certain politicians or biased journalists might cry, losing a fair election does not threaten democracy. It validates it.)

I am thankful for living in a free and (still) capitalist society, where achievement and production are valued over parasitic entitlement and envy.  I am thankful that the opportunity still exists to keep the USA from devolving into yet another failed socialist experiment.

This gratitude derives from a concrete optimism and hope with which I awaken each day, no doubt cultivated by over five decades passionately rooting for the New York Mets, New York Jets, New York Rangers, and New York Knicks, for which I am thankful. I can live without championships. I can’t imagine living without optimism and hope.

I am thankful for the businesses I have had the good fortune to run, the incredible people with whom I’ve had the privilege of working, and the truly amazing folks I have met along the way. I am thankful that every day I get to follow my passions: starting and growing businesses, manufacturing products here in the USA that make a difference, building value, developing and utilizing technology to continuously improve, finding incredible people to achieve great things together, and being able to provide for my family and community while enabling others to do the same.

I am thankful that as a Jewish person, I have a homeland, Israel, that will always exist as a haven and beacon of light and support. I am thankful that Israel is a democracy and a strong nation that understands its existential purpose and has developed the economic, military, and moral strength to ensure its perpetuity. I am thankful to be part of the Jewish nation, within which one is truly never alone, and which never fails to deliver love, friendship, support, and moral clarity in times of trouble.

I am thankful for the United States’s support for Israel in times of need and struggle against the forces of darkness. I am thankful for all those who call out antisemitism around the world when they see it and actively work and support efforts to rid the world of this most ancient hatred and destructive evil.

Most of all, I am thankful for the relationships, friendship, support, education, occasional criticism, and enjoyment that I experience every day. From family and close friends to co-workers, business associates, and amazing people from literally all across the world with whom I’ve connected, I treasure the extraordinary benefits of interpersonal relationships which we continue to cultivate in abject defiance of the increasingly impersonal emoji-based communication that dominates the world.

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site and, as I’ve explained in posts before, the interconnectivity and networked nature of my business world means that certain areas which appear to be unrelated to business are often, in fact, very important to business. To conduct business is to work with people, and when the people with whom you work are affected, business is affected. So I don’t apologize for utilizing this platform to advocate, educate, and illuminate - especially when it comes to those issues that are important to me, my family, my friends, my associates, and my connections.

In this vein, I am so thankful for the incredible outpouring of overwhelming support and positivity with which my network of friends and connections have showered me over these past weeks as my attention, focus, and emotions have been dominated by Israel’s defense of the Jewish nation - and the Jewish nation’s defense of Israel.

So if you are reading this, Thank you. Hopefully, Israel’s war will end successfully and soon, and the world will be a better place. Better for you and me. For those in Israel and the middle east. And for all decent people around the world who benefit from progress, prosperity, and peace.