I see skies of blue and clouds of white, the bright blessed day, the dark sacred night,

and I think to myself, what a wonderful world. — Thiele and Weiss

Thank you for positive influences.

Thank you for the dogs of Oak Park.

Thank you for fragrant air on neighborhood walks this time of year.

Thank you for mottled sycamore trunks.

Thank you for (un-westernized) ikigai.

Thank you for thoughts about where the stuff I buy ends up, especially the tech gadgets.

Thank you for Luddites.

Thank you for loved ones (like you). Thank you for feeling seen and valued. Thank you for trusting connections. Thank you for senses of belonging. 

Thank you again for, there’s always time to change. It’s worth repeating that well into my 40’s, social connections have grown more fulfilling than ever, not from effort to connect per se but thanks to tragedies and amazing luck coinciding with personal wellness practices.

Thank you for a reminder to self: when you assume there’s little room to grow, like you’ve “succeeded” at anything, that means there’s plenty of growing to go.

Thank you for sister wisdom.

Thank you for shuffled songs matching life in silly ways. Like the other night on a walk, reminiscing about Dad’s offer to buy me a Cadillac after I started grad school in LA… I didn’t accept—it felt important to show that my love wasn’t contingent on material provisions. Plus, I was thirty, and it was a Cadillac. I’d sworn off car ownership back then, too.

Anyhow, seconds after those memories bubbled up, a random song launched in my earbuds: “I wanna be free. I wanna just live, inside my Cadillac, that is my shit. Now throw it up. That’s what it is. In my C-A-D-I-L-L-A-C bitch…” 

(Thank you for not judging my songs and shares.) Are you tickled by coincidences too?

Thank you for the universe’s sense of humor. 

Thank you for G’s surgery a success. 

Thank you for “cheers m’dears.”

Thank you for the pooch at the park setting a frisbee down at its person’s feet and looking up for another throw. 

Thank you for a dad playing peek-a-boo with his toddler on the sidewalk.

Thank you for everyday playfulness. 

Thank you for baby leaves on houseplants.

Thank you for California poppies in bloom.

Thank you for the purity of childhood shining in adults. 

Thank you for the needlessness, in some sense, to try and be good. Our true selves are good. Thank you for trust in your goodness and mine. 

Thank you for I Believe (Ziggy Alberts) added to the playlist for morning-in-bed listens (outlook training), along with What A Wonderful World and Three Little Birds.

Thank you again for how much more valuable and valued I feel since moving on from a desk job in academia, for the freedom to trade in a sort of hoity-toity title for an uncharted adventure.

Thank you for connections that give it all meaning.

Thank you for soft train-ride tees. 

Thank you for animal sightings through windows (horses, ponies, cows, geese, egrets…)

Thank you for not long after boarding the Amtrak, a rainbow. At Merced, a red star-shaped balloon floating to the clouds. On the bus to Fort Bragg, another rainbow.

Thank you for forests dense with redwoods.

Thank you for hugging tree hugging friends and for hugging tree friends.

Thank you for well-stocked food banks.

Thank you for N and M’s gracious acceptance. 

Thank you for N’s podcast. Thank you for the amazing coincidence to meet a gratitude devotee. Thank you for her presence bubbling with inspiration. Thank you for her faith in humanity. 

Thank you for N and M’s bean jars. Thank you for their gratitude exchanges. Thank you for our “Team Time” cleaning the kitchen. Thank you for their date jar.

Thank you for future visions as the sun set.

Thank you for casting what doesn’t serve us into the river.

Thank you for a cute sea lion couple barking outside my bedroom door.

Thank you for kaleidoscope connections.

Thank you for Perfect Days.

Thank you for another Seneca nugget:

Nothing is more successful in bringing honorable influences to bear upon the mind, or in straightening out the wavering spirit that is prone to evil, than association with good men. For the frequent seeing, the frequent hearing of them little by little sinks into the heart and acquires the force of precepts.

Thank you for your honorable influences little by little sinking into my heart and straightening my wavering spirit.

Thank you eternally for when we don’t feel worthy of gratitude or love, and grace gives it to us anyway. 

Be well! <3