Gratitude

I am always amazed by the way some things come into you life at the exact moment they are needed and they have the power to bring you to your freakin knees. This happened to me on Wednesday.

First, the beginning of this semester has been a bit rough. My life seems different. Somehow I feel like I'm so much closer to becoming a big kid, who has to do big kid things and make big kid decisions. Scary, right? I had sort of felt like my life was headed in a direction I did not want, that I was settling to be a person I did not want to be, and that I was compromising my usual self for short term comfort. I had a moment where I lost sight of the things in my life that make it so amazing. I was not grateful for the good things. Then I went to a class and left completely different.

On campus, I am in the University Choir. Singing is something that I love to do and the artistry of it seems to be such a departure from my usual engineering world, so it definitely breaks up the monotony. So while I was in choir, the graduate student conductor had a bunch of little papers on the piano. She had us all take one, get into groups and share our feelings about the quotes written on the paper. Here was mine:

Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.

 

-Maya Angelou

 

This hit me, hard. Talk about incredible timing. If I am just moving about with my life, and not realizing what I have, how am I supposed to welcome the good when it comes?

 

Okay so for the point behind all this blabbering: I think gratitude is incredibly important. Now you're probably thinking "Great idea, Captain Obvious" but hear me out. We need to be grateful for the good and thankful for the bad, as the bad shows us how to appreciate the good. I am a firm believer that in life, we are all on a level playing field. Think about it:

 

You have people with insane amounts of money that have failed relationships in every aspect of their life. You have people with the mental capacity to solve the world's greatest challenges, but don't know how to simply meet someone and introduce themselves. Then, you have people who are disadvantaged significantly in one aspect of their life, whether it is poverty, a chronic illness, or similar detriment, who manage to impact people's lives in incredible ways.

 

This is the type of person I want to be.

 

I don't consider myself to be significantly disadvantaged by my own issues, but I desperately want to have impact on at least someone's life. Who knows, maybe I am just a jerk with a hero complex, but I'd like to think it is genuine. When I look back to the happiest times in my life, they are all caused by someone, not something. Maybe that is why I am a hopeless romantic, why I consider my friends to be my family, and why I think life is so much more than just the mundane day-to-day activities which define us. 

 

My friends, we are all in this together. We all have the amazing aspects, and the terrible ones; let's just try to be grateful for them.

 

 

Again, thanks for reading. You all are the greatest. I've really enjoyed the opportunity to get to know you all, and I hope that by reading my blog, you get a sense of who I am. If you ever want to know about a particular aspect of my life, or you want me to write about something, hit me up on Facebook, or leave a comment here!

 

 

Peace out,

 

Joey