Let's remember that it all started with a gaggle of moralizing and marginalized religious dissidents who feasted on fowl and a native relish of sour red berries.

On Thursday, Americans will stop and eat like the long-ago Pilgrims. Thanksgiving is the holiday of hope as well as drumsticks and football. It is also the emblem of American identity -- of who we are as a people and our distinctive role in history.

With all the soul-searching taking place on talk shows and in family rooms, Sept. 11 is forcing us to reexamine our public character as well as our private ones.

To psycho-historians, individuals and civilizations go through similar stages of development. Just as adults leave behind the mythology of childhood, the country has come a long way since the Pilgrims of Plymouth celebrated their survival on the dull, damp New England shore.

Times were hard, much harder than today. Half the colony had died of starvation or disease. The future seemed as gray as the dank November sky. And yet the early settlers persevered, clinging to the belief that there was a place for them here, and that eventually they would flourish.

This year there is more sorrow than humor as we eat and ponder the peculiar destiny of America. Sept. 11 has interrupted the jolly flow of remembrance. We are still numb and frightened by our new sense of vulnerability.

In twisted Norman Rockwell imagery, it is as though a crazed beast has come into the house and sat on the turkey, squashing the sacred bird and all the trimmings. Still, we are determined to celebrate, just as the Pilgrims did.

"We've been traumatized, and we need to call on our resilience," said psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton, an expert on large-scale violence and how survivors recover their lives after trauma.

Thanksgiving is an opportunity to find that resilience. The sharing of grief and loss is necessary "if we are to be wise about ourselves and society," he continued. "Celebrating what one has is part of affirming one's sense of being alive. Survivors always require this."

Thanksgiving 2001 reflects not only the country's survival but its maturation. A boatload of 100 has prospered into a nation of 285 million. An infant settlement cut off from civilization has morphed into the supreme power on the globe.

The United States now sits at the head of the table of nations. How mature is our national character? There are certain characteristics that are essential to aging well and wisely, researchers point out.

A key element for people and cultures, they say, is to understand that there is a world beyond yourself. In this psychodynamic light, the Sept. 11 attacks struck a blow at any lingering adolescence of isolationism and self-absorption.

"The only good thing to come out of the World Trade Center attacks is that it helped mature our president and perhaps our country," said Harvard psychiatrist George E. Vaillant, an expert in psychosocial development and author of "Aging Well: Surprising Guideposts to a Happier Life From the Landmark Harvard Study of Adult Development."

Vaillant tells the parable of the wave rushing toward the shore. The wave starts crying -- "alas, alas, I will hit the shore and I will be destroyed!" A voice from behind says: "Relax, son. You're not a wave, you're part of the ocean."

The Pilgrims, obviously, didn't see it this way. They had fled mainstream civilization to build their own separate community with their own rules. "Globalization" was not on their agenda.

But recognition of one's role in the larger community is a sign of maturity. With age, people -- and nations -- need to develop a kind of social intelligence that connects them with others, researchers say. These bonds are necessary to maintain vitality and expand productivity.

Among those in the prime of life who are secure in their achievements, the impulse of generosity becomes more important than the instinct of competition.

"One of the tremendous tasks of growing older is learning to be grateful rather than envious," said Vaillant, to have a "sense of thankfulness for what you have rather than fussing with what you haven't."

Vaillant isn't sure that the United States for all its power has reached that stage of maturity. As a country, "we're still thinking more about getting a partnership in the law firm, getting tenure in the math department," he said.

"That's the difference between an associate and partner. As an associate, you can't afford to be generous." But the partner can be generous from a position of power. So can a nation, he argues.

What's more, as a person or country matures, a more complex identity emerges. To be resilient, points out Lifton, is to develop a more flexible self that is more open and many-sided. Among nations, resilience leads to more open, pluralistic societies in contrast to a rigid group like the Taliban. But with flexibility also comes a lack of certainty, and this "can be a source of conflict and anxiety," said Lifton.

The challenge at Thanksgiving is to acknowledge these two sides of our national character and be grateful for our evolving American identity. "America has a sense of specialness," explained Lifton.

"There is a deep attraction in Americans and people outside of America to this powerful, elusive, ever-present American vision of something new and wonderful in human experience."

I want to hold on to that. As a nation, we are older, wiser. Scarred and flawed. And still beautiful.

As a close friend put it as we talked about preparing this year's Thanksgiving dinner: "The ability to look forward and have hope in your heart when things are so dark -- that characteristic endures in Americans whether you came here 300 years ago or 30 days ago."

This is our special temperament, the link between infancy and old age, the thread that runs from the Pilgrims to ourselves on this Thanksgiving.

Washington Post November 20, 2001; Page HE01