Thank you for future neighbors. Thank you for enough like-minded folks in the park to form a community of care. Thank you for its bohemian bent, for its meditators and vegans, its gardeners and outdoor adventurers. Thank you for the international contingent that would rather have less and live more. Thank you for the lower-income families enjoying greater freedom than the city affords. Thank you for the animal lovers and nature worshippers. Thank you for the old-timers aging healthily in place amid youngsters roaming free. Thank you for the proud owners of long silver locks. Thank you for the givers of warm hugs. Thank you for a region touched by tragedy recovering together. Thank you for the dream I didn’t realize I had coming true.

Thank you for another dream telling me love and happiness aren’t always how we may assume. 

To me a color of happiness is yellow—light and bright. This dream showed several yellows in a less than wonderful context. For instance, a strand of ultra smooth and glowing Barbie hair grew impossibly long from my head. Only it hadn’t actually grown there. It had been attached as I slept (by a schmoozy acquaintance who for some reason also pressured me to sign a contract). 

You could interpret the extension as a symbol of goods or ideas peddled by convention. It weaves them into our heads. Too many of us were raised on those one-size-fits-all prototypes of what to strive for. We were spoon fed notions of happiness, worthiness, love. The genuine deals can be darker. They’re less smooth. And they take time to grow.

Thank you for “What we’re unconscious to silently directs us.” - Deborah Eden Tull

Thank you for dog-eared pages in Works of Love, for the exercise its winding sentences give my thoughts. Thank you for the reason I’m reading it. 

Thank you for my sisters’ strength and insight. Thank you for their resilience.

Thank you for when the part of me that worries about being redundant is met by a part that replies some stuff is okay to repeat.

Thank you for when energy, time, and enthusiasm all point toward productivity, and accomplishments are fueled with awareness of what matters. 

Thank you for a couple talking about how their losses opened space for wins.

Thank you for the natural flow of chats with G in 5C. I hope she finds them rewarding, too.

Thank you for the observation that embracing a “lowered bar” lifestyle may actually prove more productive than the expectations-exceeding-capacities model.

Thank you for warming soups with crusty bread.

Thank you for the distinction between urgency and importance.

Thank you for self-help books that aren’t really self-help books. The ones I mean are about love and living well, but are anchored in history. Does the steadying weight of philosophy and religion render them beyond reproach? Not more so than is any modern bestseller. They do have special depth, though, or maybe character, like the faded patterns of an antique rug. Part of what attracts your eye is the beauty; another is the challenge to discern what’s there. It’s as if the stamp of time’s tread lays bare the appeal and wonder of timeless treasures.

Thank you for efforts to grow.

Thank you for (more corny but heartfelt) hopes for all of us. 

I hope we with unspoken dreams venture from the safety of our cages to explore freedom’s expanse. 

I hope we practice courage to share our hearts vulnerably and that doing so transforms our lives. 

I hope we gain awareness of the threads linking our treatment of self with how we treat others, and see how these tie inextricably to our happiness.

I hope we know positive snowball effects where the more we practice courage, honesty, and compassion, the greater is our self esteem, which heaps on opportunity. 

I hope our relationships with ourselves grow into implicit trust in our truth and intuition, and through this trust we gain integrity to live solid like mountains.

I hope we see our power and hold it sacred.

I hope we realize the fragility and gift of existence (and wellness). 

I hope we nourish ourselves with healthy inputs of all sorts—food, media, friends, environments—with insight that our consumption constitutes who we are.

I hope we grow in the capacity to give and accept love.

Thank you for being here <3