My Grateful List

One of our AP English assignments recently, inspired by Thanksgiving and a wish to lean more into gratitude and less into the stresses of school and living, was simply to post a list of 25 gratitude-inducing things.

 Here's my grateful list. If I wrote it 5 minutes earlier or later than I did, it would be different. I am grateful for that.
  • Breakfast dates with old friends where the conversation picks up right where it left off, whenever that was.
  • Words strung together so beautifully they conjure the joy and light of colored Christmas lights against a dark, cold night.
  • The capacity for self reflection that lets me learn from mistakes.
  • The ability to receive the love and friendship that is extended to me. And to return it in kind.
  • Making peace with myself and my past and with living.
  • A best friend who is the kind of person who took me in as Sandy approached, even though we were not on the best of terms right then.
  • Former students who are now teachers paying it forward.
  • Vulnerability, because that's where love and creativity and learning and teaching all start.
  • Milo.
  • Truth
  • Heartache that reminds me what is, or what has been, important.
  • Walking.
  • Nature. Even bugs.
  • Learning how to appreciate my family, and being loved by them even before I learned.
  • Photographs, especially the ones that let me see the fullness of my journey.
  • People who take care of other people.
  • The feeling of "we are all in this together."
  • Books that show me truths I otherwise might miss, or have forgotten.
  • Laughter, small chortles and great guffaws.
  • Dream visits from lost loved ones.
  • A Renaissance man.
  • Mashed potatoes. Any potatoes really.
  • Tea of almost any variety, either in quiet alone time or with good company.
  • Kindness without regard to self-interest.
  • Oatmeal.
  • Meteor showers. All things celestial.
  • Walt Whitman poems.
  • Bodies of water. They reflect both the darkness and the light of the world.
  • Shonda Rimes because she believes in every different one of us just being normal, and because she writes that into the world.
  • Sweatshirts that are still soft and fluffy inside.
  • Getting to do something that I love so much every day with people who teach me so much about who I am and who I want to be, and about who they are - which gives me great hope for the future of the universe.
  • Clean running water.
  • Chris Pratt, the Andy Dwyer version more than the Jurassic World version.
  • Middle of the night conversations about things that matter, and things that don't really.
  • Metaphors that help me make sense of the world.
  • That love is stronger than fear, even when it seems like it isn't. 

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