Hey Jenni! How’s it going? I know I only get to see you once a year, but pretty much every time we hang out it’s awesome. Like the last time we hung out…
Anyway, I wanted to let you know that this morning, I logged into Instagram and saw your post:
I loved the quote and I kept it in my head all day. And then this evening, my roommate Emily came home and she said, “Steph, I heard the best quote today, I have to share it with you.”
I understand that two roommates trading quotes is probably the chick-flick moment ever, but you have to understand that in this household, we’re perfectly ok with cheesy.
Anyway, she shared a quote with me (it’s this one), and then thanks to your post, I had one to share back with her. She loved it. Then off we went to the local ice cream shop to celebrate Mountain Day with friends.
What’s Mountain Day? It’s a random, surprise day in the fall that students at Mount Holyoke celebrate when their president announces it via a bell chime at 6 a.m. It means no classes, no activities – go off and hike a mountain! For alums, it means go get ice cream at 18:37 (the year the school was founded). Our friend Aileen, who’s an alum, had us celebrate with her.
Anyway, high on sugar from Toscanini’s ice cream, the five of us (some of us meeting for the first time), had a pretty involved conversation that meandered from how Wikipedia gets female contributors, to company mission statements (three out of five of us could name our company’s mission), to yup, the best quotes we’ve heard today.
And Jenni, that’s when I showed them the picture you posted, and we ended up having a lengthy discussion about what it means to “live gently.” Yes, I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and no, I’m not a hipster (I think).
Here are five definitions for living gently, from five different people:
- Balancing what you receive from others and what you give to make a positive difference in others’ lives
- Like meditating, living like a feather drifting and resting on the edge of a glass
- Freeing yourself from worry and concern
- Embracing the moment and going with the flow
- Having a gentle soul and treating others well.
Don’t worry, we didn’t take ourselves too seriously. At the end of the night, as we parted ways, we told each other to “live gently” at the crosswalk before we dissolved into laughter and headed our separate ways.
Anyways, I wrote this post for you because I just wanted to say thanks for posting a random quote on Instagram, that we could celebrate on a random Mountain Day, where we met with some random people, and had a random conversation about living gently.
Happy Mountain Day, Jenni!
Steph Yiu 
oh you, this totally made my day. made my WEEK. thank you so much, my dear, for being so awesome. it is always a pleasure to be with you, in person or virtually. hugs hugs!
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