be kind to one another.

do you remember four summers ago when i attended the governor's honors academy?  

i was a junior going on senior in high school...now i'm a junior going on senior at SUU. time really does fly!

one of the most pivotal moments at GHA is "transcendence day" or "the life experience" as it was called in 2009. for one day everyone at GHA is broken up into different "classes" of people: royalty, people, and beggars.

i'll spare you from all the nitty gritty details, but just know that it gets pretty bad. i was a "beggar" my first experience at GHA, and then a "people" for my second experience as a counselor at GHA last summer. after it's over, and you debrief and share your thoughts and experiences, it is a very telling and self-reflective time for participants and counselors to really think about the way we treat other people.

sitting in cedar hall tonight talking with two of my best friends about their experience with this "transcendence day" yesterday brought a lot of those emotions back to me.

driving home, i chatted with my roommate kori who went through this experience as well. she posed a very valid question: "would i act the same way or treat others the way i do today if i hadn't gone through that in such a literal way at GHA?"

i hope i would have, but i don't know. even a few years later, just thinking about those experiences makes me reflect about the type of person i am now and where i want to be. and for some reason, at 1:07 AM i'm still trying to figure it out.

my conclusion: some days we feel like a beggar, other days a royal, the next day just a "person"...and that's okay. normal, even.  it's about how we treat others on ALL of those days. 

there's so much uncertainty in the world we live in. change is a constant thing. i don't want to have one regret--ever--about the way i treated someone for the small amount of time our paths cross.

so my renewed quest is to look outside of myself and smile a little more, complain a little less, express gratitude freely and listen sincerely.

friends, it's simple. be kind to one another. the world really will be a better place.