Like you, I’ve had gratitude bouncing around my brain for the last couple days. I have so much to be thankful for that it’s hard to know where to begin. In a year when the world’s been turned upside down and shaken, like a snow globe of misery, recognizing my personal good fortune has helped me from getting too overwhelmed.
I have family, food, comfort, friends, health and healthcare. I have absolutely every last thing I need for contentment and even occasionally happiness.
But this is TCI and here I have two more things to be grateful for, riding and writing. All I want to do, I have thought to myself for a long, long time, is ride my bike and write about it. Via Red Kite Prayer I arrived at this place where I could pedal the pedals and think out loud. TCI gave me an opportunity to revise my approach and push further into the squishy parts of my brain in search of the truth. TCI has let me let my freak flag fly a little higher and flap a little harder in the breeze.
I feel grateful for all of you who followed us over from RKP, and for Padraig and Cush who encourage me to do what I do, probably against their better judgement.
The original Friday Group Ride from RKP was conceived as a way to let our readers voice their own truths, to participate in a real way in the whole RKP project, so I was glad the TCI team wanted to continue with a reader focused weekly feature. Since we’ve launched, I notice our commenters are mostly Group Ride readers.
What I’d like to do this week is ask what YOU are grateful for these days, and encourage any of you who are new to TCI and/or never read RKP to chime in. Like any group ride, we are only as good as the riders willing to take their pull.
No Eurekas here … I’m thankful for my own health and that of my family. For our relative financial security. For the space that both give for me to enjoy the relationships that enrich my life.
Possessions don’t make us happy, experiences do … Yale professor Laurie Santos’ teaches us this and much more in her excellent online course, the Science of Well-Being. I’m thankful for bikes and the experiences they continue to give me.
Thankful for having found the bike again, some 13 or 14 years ago. Thankful for not having to go through the pandemic alone, When things could be so much, much worse, it’s not hard to be grateful for what I have.
I’m thankful for everyone..
In my life.
Jeff VdV summed it up well.
I’m also thankful that I can ride when I want and not ride when I don’t.
And that usually, I want to a lot more often than I don’t.
I’m even (sorta?) grateful(?) for COVID’s recalibration of my gratitude and attitude.
Sometimes we need a reboot.
I just hope I don’t lose all of my work.
I’m really pleased with TCI as well. I’ve always enjoyed Patrick’s and your voices. And am enjoying the voices of those you’re sharing with us. I hope that TCI is financially what it needs to be for you folks so that it can continue for as long as you folks want!
Happy Thanksgiving, all!
Thankful to be contemplating another December. Hoping a vaccine will get distributed and we can all start getting together again.