I totally stole that image from a blog I read. Gorgeous sentiment; I was completely gutted by it when I saw it.
Today:
Yesterday was the national day of recognition of our myriad gifts, and everyday I am grateful for so very much - sometimes it is trivial and mundane ("yay, my dress has flowers!"), some days it is much more introspective ("I am so thankful that I have the ability to read and write and communicate with people who amaze me"), and some days it's remarkably prosaic ("I like having a home to come home to").
I am so incredibly lucky in so many ways, enumerating them seems futile some days. I have so many people in my life, in so many capacities, all of whom I learn from and am enriched and humbled by constantly. I start to think about listing them, and I know that trying to put their importance in my life into words will fall so far short - there are too many, and their contributions too expansive.
Oh, please: like that's going to stop me?? NO! So today, instead of going out into the throngs and hordes of people embracing consumerism on a grand scale, I am going to start a new little thing here: I am going to choose one person in my life to talk about as part of my daily gratitude. I am going to try not to repeat people, though there are some that come up more often (hello, I am beyond retarded on a daily basis for the ever-present and always-awesome XY; my family is stupid important; etc) - but there are others that are always there and worthy of shout outs of their very own.
This week, I've spent a fair amount of time talking to one of my girlfriends. She's one of those people that comes into your life from nowhere, and there is an instant connection - you realise that you speak the same language, and have frighteningly similar vantage point on the world. We began to get to know each other in February, and despite the entirety of a continent between us, BANG! Instant adoration of this woman. She's both constantly wise and innocent in how she views everything - when I think of her, I think of these lyrics from Jawbreaker:
There is plenty to criticize.
It gets so easy to narrow these eyes.
But these eyes will stay wide.
I will stay young.
Young and dumb inside.
It's been a rough year for my friend - there has been a lot of change, and much of it has left her shaken. This default world we live in can be brutal for dreamers and lovers and those filthy innocents that make it all worthwhile. Dreaming is hard business, after all, and it so often feels like we are failing in the moment when we are watching the beautiful world we know can exist in our heads. She is no different in how that ache hits her in the solar plexus when she is least expecting it.
Not long ago, I had an personal epiphany about failure. I was incredibly down on myself - nothing I was working on was moving in any direction that I wanted it to, and certain elements in my personal life were in shambles. I felt completely mired in the muck of mundanity, and couldn't see the sun shining anywhere because my entire soul felt like a "little black raincloud" (which is something my Grandmuzzer used to day when she was stuck in that place). But then I read something about Thomas Edison -- one of the most beloved and respected inventors of my national heritage -- and how, technically, he constantly failed in a lot of his endeavours. "I have not failed, I have found 10,000 ways that will not work," he is quoted as having said.
My epiphany was this: what we label as failure is one of the most vital stepping stones. In a crazy display of synchronicity, within days of having this realisation, I started seeing things all over the place about how necessary "failure" is to success (don't you love it when the universe does that? I do, like whoa. Please scroll up and re-read that bit about stardust. even more poignant now, isn't it? Crazy).
My friend has had a year of insanely difficult stuff. You know how sometimes you are working your way down a path, and you've been smacked in the face so many times, by so many branches, and the path itself has all but disappeared, and you can't help but start to forget what the hell was so important that you were on this stupid path for in the first damned place? Yeh, it's been that year.
But my friend, see, instead of sitting down on the ground and shaking her fist at the trees that are hitting her, and giving up 'cos she's never going to get to her destination -- she looks at the trees and asks them "Hey. How do I get to where I am going?" And the trees are so shocked that someone is talking to them, and asking for their help instead of cursing them that they open their branches and guide her down the path. 'Cos in the end, they kinda just wanted someone to pay attention to them, and now that she's addressing the things that have been hampering her progress, she will be that much more enabled to get to where she is going.
Thing is, this girl I know humbles me every time I talk to her. I am not particularly good about being in touch sometimes, but every time I talk to her, I aspire to be as amazing as she is. She is so filled with love, and joy, and rainbow sparkles; even in her darkest times, when she is terrified that nothing is going to do what it should, she continues to reach forward and learn from the now.
And her dreams are stars, and when it all comes down to it, she knows this is true: "Nearly every man who develops an idea works at it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then gets discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged."
Dreaming is difficult business. Keeping it alive and refusing to let it die due to fear and failure is that much more difficult. But my friend reminds me that it is business that is worthwhile in the end.
Today, I am grateful for this friend.
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