Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. ~ Oscar Wilde

The Three Questions – December 3, 2024

You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!

What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?

Today the most beautiful thing I saw was an image on Threads. It was an amazing shot of a ponderosa pine rising out of a dead forest through the fog. While it was a color photo, the fog was offset by the stark black of the dead trees. Really amazing shot.

What did I learn today?

What I learned today, a reminder of something I already knew, which it so often is, is that we often worry far to much about situations. Today was one of those days at work where I had three things on my schedule that all seemed like they would be horrible. I had a fair amount of trepidation and stress anticipating all three. However, as is often the case, the actual encounters all ended up being fine. I expected and angry student, but they understood. I fully expected a meeting I was not looking forward to, to be stressful and contentious and it ended up going quite smoothly. Finally, I had to deal with a personnel problem of a serious nature by having a conversation that I really expected to go potentially horribly, but it went really well. We all spend far too much time dreading things that often don’t happen, or don’t happen the way we expect. It’s hard, but we need to stop over thinking what might happen and just see what does happen.

What made me happy today?

What made me happy today was a text message and conversation with my twelve year-old niece. She texted me a funny Elf on the Shelf image and that led to a quick check in and chat. Her and I have a great connection, that was really solidified ten years ago when I was rehabbing my knee injury from my Appalachian Trail hike and stayed with them for a time. Since the rest of her family had busy schedules and she was a munchkin who needed to eat dinner earlier than the rest, we would dine together each night. Each night she would regale me with stories of her busy day. While it may seem that a day at day care is not that exciting, her imagination beefed up the excitement. She would tell me all about the adventures that her and her imaginary Woowoo got up to every day. They thwarted criminals, did business transactions and often took their day care provider’s boat out on the river for adventures. These were some of the happiest and most interesting dinners I’ve ever had, chatting with her tonight brought back those memories.