A Lovely Thought For The Fourth...

I'm fighting my anger & disappointment with activity...today I did something REALLY ambitious and cycled entirely around Grand Island.  Entirely.   It was incredibly empowering.   Started on Baseline Road, did West River first, up over the "top" of the island & back along East River.   It was great.  I only wish I'd brought more water.  Also my blood sugar crashed about 5 miles from my car (fortunately there was a Wendy's along the way...I stopped at the drive through, hilariously, for some mandarin oranges which were like the best mandarin oranges I ever ate in my life).

When I got home, I found an e-mail from Take in my mailbox.  This always brightens my mood because he writes stuff like this:
"It sounds like you are so busy always! You are a designer
and besides you make masks. Doing everything by yourself
is very hard, right? But if you do everything by yourself,
you can keep your work's quality though. You are a completely
artist!"

Also this:
" I am going to Disney
Sea in Tokyo next Wednesday! yaaay! I am so
excited right now. I really hope it will be sunny
next week even though it is the rainy season now
in Japan.You have not been to Disney Land
although you are living in America? You have two
Disney Resorts there! It is so much fun and you
can get rid of your stress there. And it is a
dream wonderland, so you should go there definitely!"

And then I read this and for some reason it touched me so deeply that I had to cry a little.
 "Probably, Japan loves
western countries. Actually we tend to accept many things from
America and we are still learning a lot of things from there.
I think it is very good for us to know what America is like because
you are the freedom."

It's so easy to lose sight of what this country can represent, at its best, for the rest of the world.   Thank you, Take.  America is the freedom.  I love that so much.   ^_^