Thanksgiving. A time for being thankful. A time for being with family and other people you love. It's also the one day during the year where you and your dinner plate can have an intimate relationship that results in you conceiving a food baby. Just me? That's cool.
This year I feel like I appreciate the situation life has graced me with more than I have the past few years.
Maybe it's because this is my first Thanksgiving that I spent as a legal adult. Maybe it's because I hit my head one night while I was sleeping and now I'm just a much perkier person. Maybe that last possibility is a little far fetched. I don't know. Sometimes I feel like the status of my life at this moment is a little too good to be true. Then again, I don't want to bury it over its head in questions either. Instead I'm going to list things I've been thankful for recently:
- My music. Both the music that I've been blessed with the ability to create and the music formed by other people that I've been blessed to hear. A lot of people don't understand exactly what it feels like to play a piece and make it yours. Sure, some other (probably dead) person wrote it. You get to add your personality to it, though. What you feel when you make music is you. Not the potentially dead person that wrote it. It's similar to the artist finishing their masterpiece. The athlete scoring that game winning touchdown or dominating that race. The actor delivering a killer monologue. The singer (who are musicians... but I'm trying to cover all of my bases) being solid on every note and bringing a crowd to their feet. Making music sort of feels like that. It's just so instantly gratifying. Revoke my man card (as if I ever really earned the right to carry one) if you want, but it's pretty awesome and there's nothing in the world I love to do more.
When it comes to listening to music, though, it's just as satisfying. Just in a different way. Have you ever heard a song and felt chills because of the way the sound strikes the pleasure center in your brain? If not then you're really missing out. For me it's movie soundtracks mostly. Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings), Harry Gregson-Williams (Chronicles of Narnia), Alexandre Desplat (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts 1 and 2) and Hans Zimmer (Holy shit... uhh... The Dark Knight, Inception, COD MW2, Pirates of the Caribbean, Sherlock Holmes, Kung Fu Panda, Black Hawk Down, The Da Vinci Code... you get the picture) are my personal favorites. Pardon me for sounding like an extremist, but their music seems to give me some kind of high. Odd way to phrase it? Maybe. But I can't think of a better way to word it. The way they can manipulate sounds to fit into the plot line of a movie and actually add to the movie instead of distract a viewer is incredible. And on top of that their music can still stand alone and be listened to sans movie. It blows my mind.
- My huge ass family. No, I can't name 9 out of every 10 people I see on Thanksgiving. Yes, they all seem to know who I am. No, it's not fair. Oh well. I make progress on facial recognition every year darn it and at least I'm putting forth an effort. Granted at these shindigs I don't really say a whole lot (crazy, I know) because they all really like to talk about football and, for anyone who knows even the tiniest bit of information about me, I know absolutely nothing about football. The atmosphere, though, is awesome. It's sophisticated but borderline chaotic. There's a good chance we've exceeded a building's maximum occupancy limit on a number of occasions. And the food... don't even get me started on the food. You will never taste ham or roast beef as good as what I get to eat around Thanksgiving every year. Unless we're related... then you might.
- Quality bonding time with friends. The first thing I wanted to mention was the Student Council lock-in I just went to a few days ago. Dear God it was insane. Do not give my council a ton of sugar and very little sleep because it gets the tiniest bit loud and the tiniest bit hectic. I'm incredibly thankful for this lock-in though. It gave me the opportunity to chill with a few people on StuCo that I probably never would have bothered getting to know otherwise. Before long we were answering questions about each other on a mock dating game (which was weird), hiding together at the top of the bleachers in the gym (we were playing hide and seek... and getting down was a little dangerous), and talking about crotch odors (don't ask). It was exactly what StuCo should be... tons of fun yes actually pretty productive... or at least I heard it was productive. I fell asleep. My bad.
And as fun as that lock-in was it didn't hold a candle to the amount of quality time I got to spend with one of my favorite people in the whole damn world. I've heard before (and don't ask me to remember where... because it's like two in the morning and if this blog turns out to be halfway coherent I'll consider myself accomplished) that there are friends in your life who become more than your friends. They become a defining factor in who you are. They're the people that you can sit around and do absolutely nothing with and still manage to create the moments that you will never forget. I talk about how little time there is left before I go my own way and head off for college (God knows where that'll take me) so every moment I get to spend with any of my friends means more than the world to me. And over the past week I haven't done anything that an outsider looking in would consider to be very extraordinary. Actually the only things I've done with friends this week is A) sit on my ass and watch Criminal Minds and B) go out on Black Friday. Given the time of year that's some pretty normal stuff. Get this, though: Watching the show wasn't the best part. Being in the mall on Black Friday wasn't the best part. The best part was watching my friend become attached to the show. The best part was the ride to and from Independence Center and the crazy stuff we talked about. To use the word "friend" doesn't seem to do the relationships I've been blessed to have any justice. There isn't any other word for it, though. I would never voluntarily stay up until 3:00 AM or go ugly Christmas sweater shopping for just anyone (and the vest I bought is hella nasty). I wouldn't trade these moments for anything. Gah, I just want to go hug the crap out of my best friends right now. Would that be weird? That'd be weird. Screw it I don't care.
I have a lot to be thankful for. Music and people, mostly. I'm also thankful for the fact that I now own TWO Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers shirts (the Blue and Green rangers... holla!) and the fact that I have been well equipped to deal with life's daily bull shit (sarcasm is a powerful ally). Mostly my music and the people, though. Those two things are the high points of my life. They always have been and they always will be.
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and managed to create a nice food baby or fall into a food coma. Or both.
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