The "Thank You" Project

"Teach us to count the days,
Teach us to make the days count..."

---Chris Rice

I am still amazed and saddened by the untimely passing of Kathy Krajco. I find myself wondering if she knew just how much good she was doing in the world, if she had any idea how many people she helped, not only through her sites on Narcissistic Personality Disorder but also through her sites on writing and on tennis strategy.

Even from the grave, she continues to inspire.

In the past three weeks, I have found myself doing something that I've previously lacked the courage to do. I have begun telling people in my life whom I greatly admire... that I greatly admire them. I have been writing to people who have made a difference in my life, or a difference to my life, and thanking them.

Writing to authors whose work has inspired me. To musicians whose voices comforted me or drew my pain out of hiding so that I could see its face. To public figures who have been exemplars to me of wisdom, or courage, or grace.

Interestingly, the same inhibition that often kept me from doing this previously is still very much in place - the sense that, of course, none of these people have any idea who I am, and that there is no reason on earth that I, Stormchild, should matter to them; the fact that a total stranger happens to respond in a certain way to their work can hardly be of interest to them.

In other words, the admirable dignity and courage of some of my realspace acquaintances is not about me; the simple basic decency of others is not about me; the writing, the music, of the artists whose lifes' work has touched and inspired me isn't about me.

I know this; so it seems presumptuous of me to write and thank them for it.

And yet...

I think of Mike, Claire's friend, and his grave illness, and her kindness. And someone who sounds quite a bit like C.S. Lewis sits up in my skull and says to me:

"Just because some of these people who inspire you are famous and successful, do you think they won't appreciate kind thanks? That they only accept compliments from personal friends? You can thank them with tact, and decorum, and appropriate restraint, but still be obviously sincere in your thanks.

"And how do you know that a stranger's simple gratitude might not be the very thing they need most, on that very day? As long as you do this purely as an act of gratitude, truly wanting nothing but to express your thanks, you are giving a gift to those who have been gifts and blessings to you."

So... the Kathy Krajco Memorial Gratitude Project has begun.

God willing, I will write to - and sincerely thank - each person who has touched my life and made it in some way better for their having been a part of it. A simple casting of bread upon the waters -

because life means so much.