Thanksgiving

When my brother was in Africa in June traveling for several weeks, he wrote my family some very beautiful emails describing his everyday discoveries and observations. When I say "my family" I am talking about: my mom, dad, my brother Nick, my cousins Sandeep, Jyotin (and now Devika and Gokul since they've moved to the East coast) and Glam and Grandpa. When Nick started writing to us, we sort of collectively started replying to all. We were all in different places in the world and it felt really nice to hear updates from everyone- even the most mundane things. Jyotin wrote to us about the grind of working at a hedge fund in Connecticut, my mom wrote about decorating her house in Montclair, dad sent us pictures from hiking in Germany on a beautiful day after work.

I think we all really enjoyed these updates, and the practice stuck- we have more or less continued the family emails, whether it's a long letter from one of us describing our travels, or a snapshot with no text, or a link to an interesting article. Today my dad sent us all this video with the text "My gift to you this morning". I found the sentiment and the video very thoughtful, and my Grandpa quickly responded with the following statement, "This reminds me that almost all we can do as individuals is live our lives with dignity and ethically as best we understand ethics. Bad things are happening all around us and it often seems like we have no control (and maybe we don't). Anyway, I love you all,and look forward to seeing you all at thanksgiving".

I felt very grateful for these snippets of reflection from my family, and today, I am actively taking a minute, or two, to really feel thanks for them.