A few observations:
Resurrecting these memories reminded me of just how often people really do deliver for each other with no expectation that their effort be rewarded. It gave me hope and the incentive to try to do the same.
I’m not a bucket list person. Most people don’t have that luxury. It is a privilege to enjoy the rewarding cycle of being curious, trying something new, failing a bit and succeeding. I still want to try hard things and to finish what I’ve started. Between about six-teen and fifty-five years old the “hard things” and the “had to” was a way of life. Now it is a choice. It never want to stop taking risks and trying.
I love the breaking of a glass at the celebratory end of a Jewish wedding… representative of life’s fragility and the reminder to us all to commit to pick up life’s pieces and try to create good. So, I conclude on a sobering story because life is messy and our world is a mess. Creating the chance to say thank you is my way of picking up a few pieces of broken glass.
Finally, when did we stop putting a space between sentences? There are some things I’m just incapable of evolving.
1988: Dear Sylvia Padilla and Axel Meijer, We belong here
Dear Sylvia and Axel,
It’s a classic form of hazing. Who can forget day one of our graduate school when the doors to our classroom opened for our section of ninety students to scramble to find the seat, the one seat, the only seat we would remain in for the entirety of our first year. Rows of seats within the amphitheater had pet names like “The Warning Track” and “The Upper Deck” intended to typecast your commitment, competitiveness and strategy for completing this rigorous first year.