Distantly Close

In a previous post I mentioned the speech we had to do in my communications class, well today was the last day of speeches and it was a tough one. It seems so strange that I do not know any of these people personally and yet I feel like as a class we've all grown so close. Everyone's speeches had something to do with living life to the fullest because you never know what tomorrow is going to bring. A number of people shared very personal stories about family members and illness, which brought out a lot of emotions in the class. For example, I won't really go into detail but today a girl spoke about her mother being diagnosed with breast cancer and accompanied the story with the song "Only the Good Die Young" by Billy Joel. In the middle of her speech our teacher literally got up and left. Everyone just looked around very confused and the girl continued her speech. After she finished, our teacher came back in and was crying a lot. She mentioned how her mother recently got diagnosed with breast cancer so it was just a lot for her to listen to. Then after a few minutes this one girl got up and handed her a bag of m&m's and said "I'm really sorry about your mom, this is all I have." It was such a simple thing, just a bag of candy, but I feel like since our class really has gotten kind of personal, the girl wanted to try and comfort our teacher.

Nobody in our class knows each other on a personal basis, and yet I somehow feel close to all of them simply from just listening to their speeches.

The speeches about losing family members to illness made me really realize something. There I was sitting in class, not in the best mood, and I'm listening to all these stories about losing parents, a family member getting diagnosed with breast cancer, and other hardships, and I started to wonder...why I am in such a bad mood, what's so bad about my life? I haven't lost anyone close to me, nor I or anyone I know has a serious illness, I should be happy. I shouldn't be sitting there over-analyzing petty situations and letting little things get to me. I have so much to be happy about and for that I am so grateful. It's funny how something so random, like your communications class, can make you realize so much. So here's a list I came up with in my head, which made me feel a million times better:

Things That Make me Happy:

1. Walking by someone on the street who is smiling to themselves- My favorite!
2. The Sun and the beach
3. Spring Time
4. Laughing so hard your stomach hurts
5. My friends and family
6. My medium bold hazelnut coffee from starbucks
7. Walking to class with my ipod on playing my favorite song
8. Meeting new people
9. The color pink
10. Baseball season (Can't wait for April 1st, first regular season game for the Red Sox!)
11. Chocolate milkshakes and french fries
12. Anything that involves chocolate
13. Sitting on the balcony of my building and watching the sun go down
14. Birds chirping- another sign of spring!
15. Fruit salad- random, but how can fruit salad not make you happy?!

 And the list goes on, but those are just things I thought of throughout the day that made me smile. Make a list of things that make you smile, I guarantee you'll feel wonderful by the end of it. Have a great evening :)