Reflecting

“I have some quotes over here that I’ve kept. A student gave this to me. They were like fortune cookies but they were chocolates. And each one had a different quote inside. I kept this one because I really like it. It says “Don’t try to be different, just be good. To be good is different enough.” And I think with our digital world particularly- with social media and all the craziness that goes on there- people try to stand out and be famous for something. Just try to live your life and do the right thing. And that’s gonna, unfortunately, in some ways make you different from others. But, maybe something we could try to live by. As a kid, a teenager, even into college, you’re trying to fit in, you’re trying to do the right things. Be in the right crowd. Thankfully I didn’t live in our times now where you have to take the right pictures and post the right things. There are things I wish I could go back and do and not try to be in the right crowd or have cool friends. Or have certain things that I felt like I needed to have at that point. Just try to enjoy life a little bit more each day. It’s easy to get caught up in the future, in the ‘what’s happening next?’ I feel like the older I get, the more I appreciate each phase of life and try to embrace it a little bit more than I used to. I wouldn’t go back and change anything. I would go back and maybe spend a day or a week at each phase and appreciate things more than I did in the moment. I wish I could go back to my own children and be with them as a baby for a few days and as a toddler, growing up. And I wish I could be with my parents, when I was a kid. Be in high school for a week and re-live that experience. But I wouldn’t do anything differently.”