Gratitude
If you judge by the pictures I’ve chosen here, it looks like I went to Grad School with two other students, one teacher, and a bunch of taxidermied animals. I assure you that’s not the case. I didn’t have one particular picture that made me feel like I’d be giving you the whole picture of what “brain-on-fire” (in my dear friend Rania’s words) fun it is to study what I want to study in the presence of people who help me tease what seems so abstract and nebulous into sentences, and empower me to feel like it’s important–and push me to make it better. It’s a privilege, and I know it. And to rise to it, I will have to work harder than I want to sometimes, will have to balance the vastness of what’s going on inside my head with the tangible importance of what I have to do each day. It is a luxury to be able to put my thoughts on paper–to have access to language, access to technology and a platform to have my words read and heard.
As I was writing my mother a note about the experience (I was woefully out of touch with her and everyone else during the week), I kept writing grateful–for the friends that got me through it, for the conversations, for the cleared sidewalks and warm, dry indoor surfaces, for the meals I didn’t have to prepare. But I complain a lot, worry a lot, get in my head about whether I’m good enough, whether anyone gets what I’m trying to do. If there were one thing we could all work on, in the place where our internal lives meet the external world, it’s gratitude. A confluence of ancestor’s hard work, parental sacrifice and plain old good luck got me here. Lots of stuff that has nothing to do with my personal ‘goodness’ or ‘worthiness’ or even intelligence has led me to these opportunities. My responsibility, now that I have gotten here, is to learn how to get better and a huge part of that is listening carefully to the people around me and creating space to share the stage and page however I can.
