For most of us, Thanksgiving goes by in a blur of family, friends, holiday preparations, and a table of traditional dishes. And we often picture the Pilgrims in much the same way: dining on roast turkey, squash, and corn along with their new Indian friends. There's some truth to that image. About 50 Pilgrims celebrated the harvest of 1621, feasting for three days with some 90 native people, including Chief Massasoit of the Wampanoag.
But the true story of the Pilgrims lies in what happened between boarding their little ship in England and inviting their Indian neighbors to celebrate with them a little more than a year later. Their story is one of harsh reality and hardscrabble endurance.What the Pilgrims achieved was nothing short of incredible. Imagine packing your belongings in a trunk, taking your spouse by the hand, and crossing a rickety wooden gangplank onto a small wooden ship in the port of Plymouth, England. It's the fall of 1620, and you join 100 other passengers—mostly families—who will spend two months crossing the ocean in dank, cramped quarters, subsisting on moldy bread and foul water and enduring daily bouts of seasickness. Your destination: an untamed land on the other side of the Atlantic where you hope providence will smile on you as you live, work, and worship according to your own conscience.
These were not seasoned explorers, they were a band of regular folk: tailors, printers, farmers, and shoemakers, with no reference point for establishing a settlement in a hostile new land. Yet guided by the local Wampanoags, they survived and eventually thrived.
Whether you're one of the millions of Mayflower descendants or a member of a more recent immigrant family, the Pilgrims' story is one that inspires. They were people just like us, willing to fight for their dreams through faith, hard work, and adherence to a vision. They did something many of us will never do; go way out of our comfort zone and take an immense risk to be truly free. This Thanksgiving, raise a glass and toast the Pilgrim's spirits. But why why not reflect on your own life's challenges and how you can tap the hardy Pilgrim spirit inside you? Your inner Pilgrim just might know a thing or two about making it through tough times.