It’s gift-giving season in many parts of the world. What a wonderful opportunity to be mindful of all the hands involved in design, manufacturing, delivery, and service.

When we receive a gift that delights us, it’s not only the giver who has contributed ... it’s countless others who have worked in the background.

A.J. Jacobs writes about this very thing in his book Thanks a Thousand, which chronicles his endeavor to thank every person involved in producing his morning cup of coffee — from farmer, to scientist, to truck driver, to designer, to barista, and everyone in between.

A simple cup of coffee exists because of efforts stretching across the globe. May our own gratitude in all things be stretched as far and as wide.

Yesterday, I hung some holiday lights on the front porch of our home.

Years ago, when the weather was warm, I spent a few hours carefully installing special metal clips on the fascia board above our porch. Ever since, hanging holiday lights has been a simple task.

The experience prompted me to consider some bigger questions:

• What am I doing today that will help my future self?

• How can I thoughtfully create something that will be an ongoing benefit?

• What assets am I taking time to cultivate?

• How can I be smart today ... such that I’ll be grateful tomorrow?

Doing something properly one time can often pave a smooth road for years to come.

There’s a myth about passion that says it’s something that we find. That we can sample various activities and within one of them, we will find our passion.

Not true.

Passion is within. It’s something we bring to what we do, not something given to us through a perfectly matched activity.

We don’t need to look for our passion. We just need to be passionate.

Some people say, “I’m not talented,” when what they really mean is, “I don’t have skills,” or “I don’t have good ideas.”

Here’s the truth: none of those three statements is ever true.

When two young siblings receive wrapped gifts, it’s not long after opening them that the question is exchanged, “What did you get?”

It’s just as likely to happen when dessert is served. Whose slice of pie is bigger? Mine or yours?

The trouble is, as adults, we can do the same thing.

Is my share as big as yours? Does the world treat one of us more kindly? Is your job easier than mine? Have you gotten better breaks than me?

This rabbit hole is deep.

What’s worse, it distracts us from focusing on our own potential. It limits our ability to be grateful. Our own gardens begin to wilt as we obsess over what’s been planted in someone else’s soil.

* * *

Said another way: gratitude is experienced most fully when it’s not wrapped in comparison.

When things go awry, we have a choice between “make do” and “make known”.

Some of us work within unexpected constraints and produce magic with what we have. And things often appear to have been planned all along.

Others like to make it known that some problem has occurred. Someone has screwed up, or nature has happened, and “here’s all we could come up with.”

Thing is, we can often make do without drawing attention to all the hurdles we’ve masterfully navigated.

And the people who make do in this quiet way … they’re more likely than not to “make beautiful” while they’re at it.

Today marks my 500th daily blog post. I’ve been looking forward to this milestone as a kind of badge of honor, but the closer I’ve come to it, the less I’ve been interested in it.

500 posts is not a goal. It never was. This activity of shipping daily, of trying to be generous with creativity, of trying to speak something of value into the world ... this an ongoing practice. It’s a commitment to a particular posture.

It’s often said: it’s about the journey, not the destination.

Here’s my take: we have an opportunity to enjoy the act of journeying ... to experience the rewards of leaning into who we are and how we hope to be in this world. And that’s to play an infinite game where the joy isn’t found at the end of a long road. Rather, we can find joy daily, and even carry it with us as we go.

I watched a car slow its pace. It meandered with some uncertainty. The brake lights illuminated near every cross street.

A frustrated driver who was closely following the lead car leaned into his horn. Beeeeeeeep.

Some considerations:

Does this kind of honking ever work? Does it ever help someone to find their way? Does it ever bring clarity to the situation? Does mere honking on these occasions effect positive change?

(If you’re reading this as a metaphor, that’s a fine thing to do.)

When an athlete gets to the game unprepared, it’s obvious.

When you don’t have the team jersey, or a water bottle, it’s clear to you and others: you don’t have with you what you need.

But there are other things we forget — inside and outside of sport — that are not as apparent.

A positive attitude. Empathy. A spirit of cooperation. Patience.

When you get to the locker room without your gear, you know you’ve made a mistake. You know what you have to correct.

Much harder to recognize that you’ve shown up to the conference without patience. Or that you’ve arrived at the office without empathy.

Putting a gym bag by the front door will help you to remember your critical equipment. The challenge is figuring out how to remember all those invisible things that are just as important.

Digital filters are everywhere.

Photo filters are the norm. Video can be easily filtered in real-time. Vocal filters and voice-changers are a thing too.

These settings are all at our fingertips. Press a button, apply a filter.

What we don’t have, however, is a button to push to make our ideas better.

We can’t simply apply effects to an idea to make it some version of beautiful.

Ideation and innovation still need our intellectual and emotional commitment. We haven’t automated, “make my idea better.” That’s still going to take the magic that’s born of the creative process.

There’s a beautiful quality to a densely layered oil painting. It has nuance and variation. Physical richness. Even the highest quality printing process cannot replicate the layered luminosity created through glazes and scumbling.

Longtime friendships are like this. They have a particular depth and presence that cannot be duplicated. Strong bonds built over time ... through closeness and distance, joy and sadness, and everything between.

Friendships like these ... cherish them like a priceless work of art.

Writing daily gives me an opportunity to be more conscious of my style and my habits.

I tend to use lots of commas, ellipses, and dashes in order to hint at how I’d say the text aloud.

I’ve noticed that some phrases are frequent flyers too, like the words “of course”. I typically say “of course” when I mean, “this may be obvious, but it’s worth pointing out explicitly.”

There’s some irony here. In a literal sense, “of course” means “of the ordinary course of events” or “according to the expected program or path”. Meanwhile, I’m more inclined to encourage us to step off the path — to be off course — or at least to consider how we can create change by flirting with what’s near the guardrail, or even beyond it.

It took me three weeks to get on a plumber’s schedule. When he arrived at my house, I said, “Wow. You guys are really busy.”

His reply was telltale and flat: “‘s because no one wants to do this kind of work.”

Implied, of course, was that he didn’t want to do it either.

I don’t blame him. Plumbing work can be foul, complicated, and physically demanding. But I couldn’t help considering the story this plumber tells himself: “I’m stuck doing a job no one else wants to do.”

Years ago, I knew another plumber whose attitude was quite different. Same jobs, same customers, but a different mindset. His was, “I’m an everyday hero. People have a problem, and I have the skill-set and mental toughness to fix it. Maybe not glamorous, but absolutely critical.”

I can’t speak for the happiness of either plumber, but one carried his tool bags as though they were twice as heavy.

Many old medicine cabinets have a slot in the back that says “used blades”.

For me, this tells a hopeful story. That one generation’s solution for dull razor blades was to drop them into a wall cavity, and that a newer generation finds the obsolete practice ridiculous and dangerous.

No, we haven’t solved all the world’s problems ... even when it comes to disposable razors. But we can change our ways. It often takes innovation and cultural shifts, but we can change.

We can see what prior generations have done, and we can make better decisions. That we no longer fill our walls with hazardous trash ... that’s one small example of forward progress.

Much has been done, but there is so much left to do.

Put a splint on one of your fingers and some routine activities may become difficult. A small change in digital mobility can turn simple tasks into awkward challenges.

What we sometimes forget is that we’re surrounded by people with splints. And we have them too. Hidden areas of brokenness that we’ve plastered over. Places where injury has caused us to become immobile. Parts where we’re healing, but not yet whole.

The point here is not to diagnose.

The point is to understand.

To have empathy, and to appreciate the many challenges that can come with injury and healing — challenges that can present themselves in all sorts of ways … which can then become challenges of their own.

A friend of mine is learning some new skills. He was interested in trying something, so he found some courses online, and got to work learning.

It really is that easy.

Is the learning part easy? Not necessarily. It might even be quite challenging.

But the act of setting out to learn something new ... that’s certainly easy.

Of course, we don’t always tell ourselves that story. We have a list of reasons why we can’t do certain things, or why there’s no time to study a new craft, or why following our passion is impractical or impossible.

But that’s a voice we can silence. Or better yet, a voice we can replace with a new one that says, “You want to try something new? Awesome. Go for it!”

I heard an amusing perspective on gossip.

“If it’s none of your business, it’s none of your business.”

Often, we’ll hear, “Well, it’s none of my business, but — “ And what follows is surely a conversation about what’s been presented as not the speaker’s business.

Worth considering: if it’s none of your business, maybe it really is none of your business. Perhaps best to leave it be.

I attend a regular meeting where we use name cards. These small signs sit on the table in front of each of us and help with member identification.

A colleague sitting beside me thought that her card was backwards, but quickly realized that our names are printed on both sides.

We laughed, “Some days, we need that reminder!”

It was a joke, but there’s some truth in it. Some days, we do need a reminder of who we are. A reminder of our worth. A reminder that our existence is consequential, and that our name can be a beautiful reference to all that we are, all that we do, the story of our past, and the promise of our future.

You are you, and that matters.

When someone says, “I’ll try to get it done by next week,” it’s not often that they mean, “I’m not sure if I’m capable of this task, but I will do my best.”

No. What they usually mean is, “I can do this, but in order to accomplish it by next week, I’ll need to prioritize it over other things ... and I’m not sure I’m ready to do that.”

So when we hear, “I’ll try,” we might really be hearing, “I’ll try to prioritize,” which is another way of saying, “I’ve got to convince myself that this is important to me.”

I recently heard someone say, “I know all about [this].”

What a fascinating posture.

I wonder how things might be different if this person had the attitude of:

• I’m always learning about ...

• I’m a lifelong student of ...

• I’m endlessly curious about ...

When we say, “I know it all,” what we’re really saying is that we’ve made the unfortunate choice to stop learning.