Rock On
Add this to the million reasons to be grateful: I am safe. I am healthy and alive. I am happy, most of the time. I learn. I love to learn, and I get to do this on an ongoing basis. I can read, which is rare in this whole wide world of ours, and I am comparatively rich.
I have had the gift of music and theater, my parents and grandparents taking me into New York City to see orchestras play classical music, ballets, Shakespeare Festivals and Broadway shows. Some of my earliest and happiest memories involve these incredible gifts. I have had the gift of renewal, meeting new groups of friends, co-workers, colleagues and mentors, who have helped me along my path at various stages.
I have had challenges, certainly my share of them, and lived to tell the tale. People have helped me through these as well. People I may never even meet have helped me stay alive, by planting fruits and vegetables, raising animals that will become my sustenance and trucking these things around the country. They have helped me by listening, and even not listening at times.
Recently I read an article about how the idea that we’re all connected isn’t just woo-woo crap made up by someone trying to sell you a self-help book. It’s true on a very scientific, molecular level. Your atoms crash into mine all the time at the grocery store, in line at the DMV, picking out a new book at the local bookstore. Every once in a while, usually out doing mundane things like errands, I will remember this and fall to my knees a little in my mind. My brain will do a little somersault of joy in the knowledge that I am not alone. I’m never alone, in fact. And if I should see your atoms shooting past me at the dry cleaner, I’ll give a little wave and say, rock on you crazy molecule, and godspeed to you.
