Common Ground and Blind Squirrels

The quickest of posts today, because I pick Danny up at school at 2:15 on Mondays and it's always a bit of a challenge, even when I am up at 5 as I was today, to squeeze a day's work in first.

The first weekend of the year is behind us, and it was a good one here. Starting off in a BMGS mode counted for a lot, as did having Danny over Friday and Saturday and having friends over for brunch on Sunday. Milton and Nancy are new friends of mine, old friends of Betty's, and we feasted on scrambled eggs with avocado, mushrooms, and cheese, sweet potato home fries, fruit salad, and egg nog, and common ground.

Today is an anniversary for me, and for Betty. A year ago today, on Sunday January 4 2009, acting on a New Year's Resolution to start subscribing to the print edition of the Sunday paper so I could bring it to Starbucks, get out of the house, take a break from the computer screen, and stop being such a hermit, I did just that. There was an easy chair next to me, and after five minutes a lovely woman sat down. We talked for an hour, and apparently we found common ground.

Why would I write a blog, at this point in my life, about my not quite relentless search for health of all kinds? Because I believe that we make many of the hard and easy things we do in life more meaningful and, often, more likely to be accomplished, by reaching out and finding common ground with others. No two paths are exactly the same, but there are few people from whom I cannot take or learn or feel something of value, and it is my conceit that the converse is also true. In the sharing, and in the feedback that comes sometimes when I least expect it, I occasionally find evidence that I am not a total alien. Or, at the least, that there are other aliens with whom I share common ground.

So it's Monday the 4th and I am hopeful that Betty and I will do something modest or immodest to celebrate a year of gradually increasing common ground this evening after I drop Danny off at 6 and go for a swim. I am so grateful -- while acknowledging my common ground here with the blind squirrel who once in a great while finds an acorn -- for this gradually increasing common ground.

And I am grateful that I had the good sense to fire up the BMGS editorial department once again on January 1, not only because I am feeling healthy this morning after three days of healthy eating and four straight days of getting to the gym and the pool, but because, yes, my first post of the year brought once again to the rich soil of my common ground with great friends, even if the richness was marked as well with deep sadness.

Amidst the warmth of reading warm, fuzzy feedback from great friends after my post, I also heard from one friend who told me that his brother might be getting something positive from BMGS as he fought for good health against far more extreme adversity than I have had to deal with. Which, of course, is further inspiration for me to be accountable here in various ways.

And then there was an email from Stewart, one of my closest friends over the past three decades and more:

We are fortunate and should be grateful for all we have. You remember Bob, my oldest friend from Malden, Mo? He had a serious gambling addiction that he never addressed. He started day trading a couple of years ago, got way deep in debt, had to declare bankruptcy, get divorced and killed himself on my birthday, dec 17. As hard and terrible as your experience has been, you did what you needed to do to survive. Bob left 3 kids--2 grown and one only 5. Sorry to burden you with this. 

As you may or may not be aware, I share a ton of common ground with Bob. As I wrote back to Stewart,

It just breaks my heart. And hell yes, there is so much common ground between his experiences and mine. It seems strange to say now, but there are a lot of ways in which, destructive as it was, I am lucky to have gone through what I have gone through. And of course, even luckier to have you and the other friends I have had who have stuck with me and talked me through and helped me talk myself through the process of putting myself and my life back together. You never need to apologize for sharing anything with me, Stewart. 

Common ground, and a whole lot of gratitude for it. That's what I'm talking about.