Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving and we are in the car headed from Berlin to Bruges. Leaving Germany / Berlin on Thanksgiving is appropriate. We just spent a week or so relearning about the horrors of the World Wars and the history of every place visited before that, the Roman empire, Napoleons wars, Prussia, the Moors, etc. Sitting in a holocaust museum and listening to individual stories of kids, women and men torn from their families and driven to concentration camps makes you appreciate things about your own situation. Even more recently, the division of Germany between Russia and the Allied powers, this one hitting home even more as I was born and lived into the tail end of Communism, right in the capital. 

As fucked up and unfair the world seems today, with wars, racism, terrorism and other injustices, I cant help to think that we are moving forward as a humanity and we live in the best times to live to date. The power of the Internet in the last 2 decades has ushered awareness and information our ancestors only dreamed of. It is harder and harder to get away with major atrocities and cover up massive scale crimes. We are entering an age of transparency, while scary on the surface, IMO it beats the alternative.

There were many things about my condition that I did not consciously choose, some were genetic lottery, some were my parents will to go for greener pastures. I probably didnt start to consciously affect my own life until my teenage years, more in my twenties and now in my thirties. Not sure if I am fully in charge just yet :) I know there are some that were more fortunate than me, but I also know that there are others that were not. I watch the unrest in Ferguson and cant help but feel the empathy for the pain that folks must be feeling. 

My life as  I know it is great, I am fortunate to have loving parents, an immediate family Im very close with, a cousin that I love and get along with like a brother and my little brother and sister. My child Tara, who is teaching me about sacrifice and unconditional love. I am fortunate to be surrounded by loving friends that accept me for who I am, both my pluses and minuses and my great coworkers that allow me to be passionate about what I do in my professional life. Also, I am thankful for the people who give me a hard time, push my buttons, my competitors and everyone that forces me to get better. I hope to continue to live a blessed life, continue and get better in appreciating what I do have and hope to contribute to others thankfulness as well.

G