Day 25: Education

 

I am very grateful for my college education at Brown. I've referred to different things over the years - my college coach, some particular friendships, some lessons learned - but I don't think I've ever done one on the experience as a whole. 

I'm grateful for all the new experiences. Coming from Nebraska, just living in the Northeast offered a smorgasbord of seeing new cities and states and meeting all kinds of people. I got to stay with a friend in Maine whose dad is a lobster fisherman. I got to visit a friend's cousin in New York City and attend a traditional Shabbat dinner. I got to see the fall leaves in New Hampshire and Vermont, dine on lobster in Boston, and walk through opulent mansions in Newport. The list could go on and on.

I'm grateful for the intellectual rigor of the classroom discussions and readings and lectures. The classes on history and political science in particular were better than I could have ever imagined those subjects to be, and caused me to change my major just so that I would have a good excuse to take more.

I'm grateful for the opportunities it afforded me. Going to an Ivy League school helped me get into a strong law school and has since helped give me the benefit of the doubt when I'm job searching, even with my very unorthodox career path that includes a 13 year work history gap. I'm also grateful for the confidence it has given me - coming from a public high school in Lincoln and being thrown in as a small fish in a big pond but then figuring out how to swim, empowers you to feel like you can do hard things. I'm grateful for that confidence boost.

I'm thankful for the memories. Between dorm life and the track team and the Christian fellowship, late nights at the pizza place and afternoons studying on the Green, and so many hang outs -- college is a really special time of life that is so focused on friendship and fun and enriching activities, and you never really get that in such a focused way again in life. I enjoyed the heck out of it and I'm super grateful for the memories most of all.

Day 24: A Book you Learned From

 

I'm thankful for a book I'm reading right now, "Orthodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton. This book makes many great points, but the a couple quotes that are sticking with me from my reading this morning are the following: 

"Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery, you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland."

"Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. He ways always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise. Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small." 

These ideas that celebrate wonder and mystery and how much is out there besides just me -- written in the context of Christianity - and by such a witty, intelligent author -- make me want to stand up and cheer. I'm only about a fourth of the way into the book and am SO grateful i get to to move through this one slowly over the summer. 

Day 22: Something You Use Every Day

I am grateful for my washer and dryer. We are at the stage of family life where we use these machines at least once a day, and depending on the sports season, sometimes more. While it's easy to complain about the never-ending task that it is to stay on top of the clothes pile, the reality is that I have it very easy. I don't need to hand-wring out clothes or dry them on a clothes line. I don't need to walk them down to the river or haul them over to the Laundromat. I don't need to carve out a whole day for the chore of laundry, because the reality is that other than folding, it takes almost no time to shuffle clothes through the machines. I'm grateful that modern technology makes laundry really a pretty easy chore, and I'm grateful for the provision of clothes to wash and family members who continually produce dirty clothes. 

Day 21: Things You Like About Summer

 

This pictures contains many of the elements I love about summer. Being at the beach. Hot sand and cold water. Bonfires and S'mores fixings. More freedom in the schedule as school is out, many activities go on pause, and vacations are encouraged. More time to spend with friends and family, making memories. I am so grateful for this season and I'm particularly grateful for all the memories just like this made on this beach throughout my life. 

Day 20: A Friend #2

I'm grateful for my friend Karen. We've been friends for close to 20 years now, starting when we were baby lawyers working at Legal Aid together in our 20s. Then there was a five year interlude where both of us moved out of town for a bit, but then we both found our way back to Reno, both with young children in tow. Karen started a playgroup and we were again seeing each other very regularly, and that has continued on for the last decade and through many more changes - one or the other of us back to work for a stretch, more babies arriving, and now both homeschooling. 

Karen is one of these rare people who it's equally satisfying to have a deep heart-to-heart (where you come away feeling very seen and heard), or to have a silly laugh fest or adventure -- and often these things run together. I have so memories lake days, birthday parties, Christmas caroling and trick-or-treating, pumpkin patches, and the list could go on and on. 

I admire how Karen tackles everything she does at 150%. When she's lawyering, she's all in for her clients. If she has a new work idea but the company does not yet exist, she will successfully build it. Now as a homeschool mom, she not only does amazing teaching and care for her own kids, but she runs a fantastic weekly co-op and is always planning and putting together other fun and educational ventures on the side. She is a great gatherer and includer of people and has welcomed so many into her home and the communities she is involved in over the years. She lives life with great gusto and a huge heart, and I feel very lucky to know her and call her a good friend.

Day 19: Health

I am thankful for antibiotics. This one also probably could've gone in the "something you take for granted" category - that it is exceedingly unlikely that I will die this year from any kind of infection that responds to antibiotics. I don't have to worry that much about cuts, bites, or even most bacterial infections. I didn't have to worry that much about post-surgical infections for Josh (and he had many, with metal devices coming of his head right as he was at the handsy stage of late baby / young toddlerhood). All these things were potential killers even for young and healthy people before the discovery of antibiotics. I'm grateful for the way this increased lifespan and decreased suffering. I understand that antibiotic resistance is becoming a problem, and I am grateful that there are smart people working on this problem.

I'm grateful for people who devote their lives to science and medicine, who are right now working towards finding the next big medical breakthrough that will alleviate or eradicate diseases that are plaguing people now.

Day 18: The Weather

 

I am so grateful for the feeling of running in the rain. My first memories of running in the rain are from high school, when during track practice our coach would motivate us to run miles through the freezing rain by saying, "Columbus (a rival high school) isn't running through the rain!", planting the idea that doing a difficult thing would make you a better and stronger competitor. So the first thing I love about it is the idea of facing adversity and running straight into it, head down, with determination. 

Second, and somewhat opposite of that first thought, I love how running through the rain feels like freedom. There's something about rain hitting your face that feels like abandon, like the rules of how things are supposed to be have been removed. It's refreshing and surprising and usually when I get done with running through the rain for a few miles, my face hurts from smiling. Cheers to running in the rain!