Ready or not. Nineteen days after a divisive election, Thanksgiving Day is upon us. Whether people are excited or discouraged by the election results, there’s no point in pretending that Americans are one big happy family.

Still, it’s worth remembering that other generations faced tougher times. We are not trapped in the Great Depression with food lines around the block and 1 in 4 Americans out of work. We are not living through a world war where more than 400,000 Americans will die.

Thanks to advances in health care, we can expect to live 30 years longer than people who lived 125 years ago. Life is also more forgiving. Paved streets and indoor plumbing, electricity and miracle drugs — we can’t count all the ways we’re better off than almost anyone who ever lived.

It doesn’t hurt that we live in California, a place endowed with a benign climate and a better standard of living than most.

Sure, life can be bittersweet, but if we can love and be loved, then we should really be able to count our blessings.

I know. If your favorite candidate didn’t win, you’re angry. Even if you backed the winner, you’re not sure what the future holds.

We must hold on tight and take time to list the things we are grateful for – remembering the people we love, the friends in our lives, the food on our tables, the roof over our heads and the health care workers who will help us when we are sick .

After a long election season of anxiety and lack of compassion, we hope you are doing well. There’s a reason psychologists were asked to offer remedies for the depression and anxiety that defined this election season.

It may not sound like much, but I am grateful for our early morning walks. Rain or shine, my wife and I—along with our dog, Charlie—walk 3 miles every day. It’s a ritual that started as exercise, but soon became so much more.

Good morning, we would say to those we passed.

And pretty soon we stopped to talk about anything that interested us that day. It could be the weather, or dogs, or travel, or real estate, or home improvement, or hometown news, or plans for the future, or life and death. We share moments, big and small.

Catherine has just returned from New York. Michelle and Robert are back from their first trip to Paris. Gale and Sher are glad they sold their house on a hill and moved to a house that is smaller and more manageable.

Rich and Allen move to Thousand Oaks to be near family. Bruce and Loretta move to Santa Cruz for the same reason. Phyllis retired here from Kansas. She drives her grandson to school every day.

It’s not always in-depth conversations – and not always happy ones either. But they are about people sharing their lives with their neighbors.

One of our friends is recovering from heart surgery. A couple we see most days is grieving the recent death of their daughter.

Howard died several years ago, and Rick died this year, four months after telling us he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

We miss them. After all, there was so much more to talk about.

So many people we’ve gotten to know, even in passing — Jan, Nona, Nancy and King, Jim, Paul, Ed and Nancy, Pat, Dave, Rick and Sharon, Mary, Gary and Elinor, Kathy and Heather, Fred, Margaret and Des, Lloyd and Alice, the guy who washes their cars every Saturday, the couple with the blue SUV, the guy in the old Mercedes, the couple with the dog named Bullet, the guy we call Philosopher, the couple with the dogs named Maggie and Murphy, the owner of Bijou … the list goes on.

Sometimes we know their dogs’ names, but not the people’s names.

If we happen to go without our dog, people will ask: “Is Charlie okay?”

The conversations may be brief, but these human connections are important to us and remind us that we belong to something that is too often missing in modern America – a community of people.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving, we know that life comes with moments of elation and moments of despair.

But who isn’t grateful to be here?

So take time this week to hug a loved one, call a friend, and write down all the reasons you’re thankful to be alive.

Keep in mind that the people who study this thing called happiness say that the road to contentment begins with our ability to be grateful.

In a precarious world, there can never be a better time to celebrate what we have.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at [email protected].

You can send letters to the editor to [email protected].