dare to dream

Grateful: Day 10

It's 20 degrees outside, but I don't know that - really - because I'm inside my house.

Tonight, when I'm sleepy, I'll hop in my bed, and I won't need to cover myself with mounds of blankets, like I did while I was on my mission in Uruguay, because there is heat in our home. Source:  Swallowfield, Jennifer Judd-McGee. 

I've lived in homes, apartments, dormitories.  Sometimes owned, sometimes rented.  On occasion, beautifully appointed.  Some of the memories are happy, some not.  The details change.

But one thing has not.

Every day of my life, I have shelter.

What about you? 

Grateful: Day 9

I'm not feeling very grateful today, and would rather not post.

But, I promised that I would for 15 days.

So, today I'm grateful for what I believe, which includes the importance of keeping promises.

There are other things that I believe, like the importance of "giving thanks in all things." In his book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton wrote:

Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth? (p. 60)

I also believe that each of us has something to do that only we were meant to do.  In The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis wrote:

"Child,' said the Lion, 'I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own."

Our very own story.

Grateful: Day 8

It's true that my playing the piano for Macy Robison as she performs Children Will Listen:  Reflections on Mothering at Time Out for Women beginning on February 4, is incremental.

But it wouldn't have come about if I didn't know how to play piano.

I first started playing after I saw The Sound of Music; so inspired was I, I plunked out Do-Re-Mi.   Because I started tinkering at three, I don't remember what it's like not to be able to play.  In other words, I can't really imagine a me that doesn't play. 

Source:  istockphoto

Because of my "what is" skill, I occasionally accompany gifted vocalists like Macy Robison. In collaborating, we have a wonderworking experience of giving utterance to emotions/feelings that simply can't be conveyed through the spoken or written word. 

When my music helps others to feel something they couldn't otherwise feel, to believe something that they may not have quite believed about themselves, I feel connected -- and jubilant.

***
What did you learn to do as a young child -- whether playing the piano, or riding a bike -- that you can't remember not knowing how to do it?

Grateful: Day 7

On weeknights I like to watch television for 1-2 hours. 

I know that Seth Godin (who rocks) posits that I won't get any new ideas while I am watching television, but that's mostly the point.

 
Source:  istockphoto

My favorite shows in late 2010 were:

Burn Notice
The Good Wife
White Collar
The Closer
Castle
Psych

When I turn on the TV, I can turn off the millions of thoughts running through my head.  We all need escapes, preferably those that don't hurt us or anyone else; TV is precisely that for me.

It's pretty great.

Thank you Philo T. Farnsworth.

Grateful: Day 6

I know people, including my husband, who rarely get a good night's sleep, even if they don't have young children.

There have been very few days in my life when I've been sleep-deprived. I sleep well at night (my husband usually got up with our children when they were babies -- a gift!).  I can sleep on planes.  I can take naps. 

It's really hard to not take this for granted.

Arianna Huffington's article was a good wake-up call.

Sweet dreams.

 
Source:  istockphoto

***

Do you sleep well at night?

If it's not sleep, is there something that just is so easy for you -- that you forget to appreciate?

Grateful: Day 5

During Christmas vacation, I not only read blogs, e-mails and tweets, I read books:

• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Matched by Ally Condie
• A Blunt Instrument by Georgette Heyer
• The New Capitalist Manifesto by Umair Haque
• Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

All were good, some were great.  But that's not what I'm grateful for.  Well I am, but even more fundamentally, I am grateful that I can read.  That I can see to read, and that I know how to read.

Do you remember when you read your first words (mine were Run with Dick and Jane)?  I was four.  I also remember being eight, sitting in the car, and realizing that I could decipher billboards and street signs.  My world had expanded, as if by magic.

I can read.

How did you feel when you realized you understood what words meant?

How would your life be different if you couldn't read? 

Grateful: Day 4

In my professional life, I occasionally become dispirited when I observe that men with credentials similar to mine have a better "seat at the table."  It is, in fact, astonishing that there are still so few women making it to the top of their professions, and that women earn signficantly less than men do.  

And yet...

• I can vote -- 100 years ago I couldn't.
• I have a career, not a job -- 50 years ago, my options would have been far more limited.  "Girls aren't doctors, my grandparents told my mother."
• Just yesterday morning, I sat at the table as a partner/shareholder of Rose Park Advisors with my two male colleagues; when I dissented, my views were respected, even welcome.  Ten years ago, such a circumstance was less probable.

"What is", is so much better than "what was".

Grateful.

***

P.S.  If you are a woman in the workforce -- or in college, and thinking about your career -- I encourage you to watch/listen to this 15-minute video from Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, at Ted Women. 

 

What is better for you than it was for your parents?

Grateful: Day 3

A century ago (or elsewhere in the world), I would have had to live with my increasingly debilitating intestinal problems, an ailment that would have dampened productivity, and my overall well-being, for decades to come.  Pain-free surgery would have been an impossibility.

Instead, thanks to anesthesia, by the time I arrived in the operating room at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center on December 20, I was  completely out.  As Dr. Nagle expertly performed the laparascopic sigmoidectomy, I experienced no pain, and very little afterward.  During my two days of post-op recovery (there was never any doubt that I would recover!), I was attended to expertly, and gently, by residents, nurse practitioners, nurses, and nurses aids.  Everything worked.  Splendidly.
Source:  istockphoto

Two weeks later, I'm on the mend.  I'm not 100%, but the recovery has been rapid enough, I could almost overlook just how miraculous modern-day medicine is.  And how grateful I am for a corp of physicians and nurses with good bedside manner.

Almost.

How is your life different because of modern-day medicine?

Grateful: Day 2

This morning I woke up thirsty.  I drank a tall glass of cold, clean water.  I then brushed my teeth (ooh, that peppermint fresh breath.)   I showered in hot, pulsating water.  Later, I'll wash the dishes in warm, sudsy water.  As a nightcap, I'll splash my face with warm, invigorating water.  Occasionally, I treat myself to a shampoo and style.  And, I have many happy memories of swimming in (or sitting by, if truth be told) the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, mountain lakes in the Sierra Nevada, running rivers in the American West, and swimming pools across the globe.

All thanks to clean, hot or cold (as I like), water.  

Yesterday, I read that Matt Langdon, founder of the Hero Construction Company had raised $5,000 for Charity: Water in order to build a well that will provide a village with clean water for 25 years.


Source:  istockphoto

I have clean, running water every single day of my life.

Unexpectedly humbled.

***

What are you grateful for?

Grateful: Day 1

After writing the Bitter or Grateful post, I decided that if I could cultivate gratitude in 2011, I would be happier.  And what better way to cultivate this much-desired trait than to make a commitment out loud.  Here it is: 

Every day for at least fifteen days (I'm contemplating thirty, but am not ready to commit to that yet), I am going to record something for which I am grateful, my emphasis being not on the incremental, but on what already is.

My reason for focusing on "what is" is two-fold:

1)  As an antidote to bitterness, I want to acknowledge the sunshine that never seems to hide its face, the goodness that already abounds in my life.  It is easy to forget about anything that is always there.  It becomes the air that we breathe.  Yet if it were gone, we would die, either literally and/or figuratively. 

2)  I tend to think if I just had "x" then I could achieve "y" dream.  Yet I overlook, even eschew, the embarrassment of resources at hand.  By focusing on what is, rather than what's new, my hope is that I'll recognize that bootstrapping my dreams is a real possibility.

Day 1:  My husband and children
During my recovery from surgery, I have had one of the pleasantest holidays in memory.  That is in large part due to my husband and children.  I enjoy strolling in the neighborhood while talking to my husband, sitting on the bed reading Les Miserables while my daughter races through yet another Percy Jackson book, listening to my son practice singing and continually reminding me that he's almost taller than me, and lounging together while watching Burn Notice et al. 

I like being with my husband and children.  I like how I feel around them.  It's so comfortable and safe that sometimes I forget just how valuable they are to me. Which is why I have formalized how I feel about them by giving them a name -- my Harborhaven Advisors.  

Johnson family, Cape Cod, September 2010; photo copyright Lanola Kathleen Stone

What are you grateful for?

Is there any resolution that you want to make for 15 days that is readily accomplished giving you an early win in 2011?

P.S.  I am also grateful for LaNola Kathleen Stone; she has taken photos of our family every year, except one, for over a decade.  She has chronicled our lives, shown us to ourselves -- it has been a gift for which I am deeply appreciative.