I recently heard an interview with singer songwriter Miranda Lambert, and she said you can’t write if you don’t live a life. I’m paraphrasing here, but she said you have to get out in the world and see and experience things to have something to say.
I agree.
While each person’s world varies in size at different times in our lives, we can endeavor to live a life today. Maybe the whole world is within reach for you. Or maybe you have an illness and your whole world is a triangle of bedroom to living room to kitchen.
Whatever your world looks like, I’m reminded that what matters is that we connect with each other and the world around us. It’s important that we seek, we open our eyes, we imagine distant horizons and then we lean in to look and listen closely to what is right here in front of us. To really observe. To really care. And to really feel something. When your phone dings mid-conversation, can you resist breaking eye contact with the person in front of you? Maybe that’s the place to start. Presence.
I told a friend recently that I hesitate to hit “send” when I write these notes to you, wondering if anything I could say here is worth a darn. She told me to “keep hitting send.”
Today is my birthday. We get a little extra reflective around birthdays, don’t we? I’m thinking about all of the people and moments in my life that I’m grateful for — you, my family, and my friends around the world. I’ve moved a lot in my adult life — Minnesota, Hong Kong, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and now the Austin area. Because of that, I don’t really have friends in my immediate location. Being new, we don’t yet have friendships with proximity. A friend reminded me that that’s okay too. While we continue to work on this, today I’ll focus on how fortunate I am to have friends in many places. I won’t allow myself to feel without… because I’m not, we’re not.
I’m grateful for the love, for the helpers, for the work I’ve been given and for the opportunity to create. I'm grateful for simplicity. I’m grateful for the people who let me be my imperfect well-meaning self and the people who believe in me when I don’t believe in myself. I’m grateful for the ones who give me strength and at the same time the benefit of the doubt.
Author Joan Didion is quoted saying, “I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means.”
What I’m thinking is I’m feeling grateful today. The past couple years have had their challenges. But all is well. And as I find my way forward, I wanted to write you and say thank you for being here. And hit send.