Excerpts from a HEROs Story |
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Gratitude is the reason I am the person I am today. Without it, I would be crippled by my ego, my fears, and the weight of Western society. It is the conduit through which I was given a better understanding of myself and the cosmic mess that I inhabit. As I approach the beginning of my third decade, I am content with where my life is going. Not many people my age seem to have as high of expectations for themselves as I have for myself, but that is their choice. I am grateful for the choices I have made, and for being aware of those choices. ...You could say my deepest sense of gratitude comes from myself. Some people have called me egotistical when I talk like this, but it's true. I see so many people my age with self-deprecating mindsets, unable to be grateful for what is in front of them. Unfortunately, this is a choice many people aren't aware of. Gratitude comes from within, and I choose to be grateful. I choose to be different, and I choose to be obscure. Now, not everything in my life has been by choice; there are a great many things we as human beings have no control over-mainly love and death. Nobody chooses these aspects of life, for they are inevitable. My greatest lessons in love and death come from a single person: my father. It has been five years since he died behind the wheel of his golden 1972 Buick Skylark, and the pain never really fades; I choose to live every day as he would have. Every day I saw how much he loved me, my brother and my mom. Steven Lennox lived for his loves-his family, his friends, his work, and his music. When he died, the family who had gathered around his caring and engaging presence began to fall apart. only then did so many of us realize how much he worked at keeping us all together and how much he loved us. All of the interesting characters and beautiful human beings he brought into his life were also brought into ours, and for most of my life I existed in this bubble of safety and familiarity. Then that bubble was gone... Be moved by the this HERO's message in "Gratitude In The Aftermath of Loss" as experienced by Maxx Lennox |
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