Sometimes, when I’m at home and I’m really bored, I like to go through the drawers in my room. You see, like my parents and their parents before them, I have a hard time throwing/giving all my old crap away. I come from a long line of pack rats! Therefore, my drawers are filled with Hanson CDs, my old basketball card collection, Paraguayan currency, and broken watches. Not everything is junk, though. There are exactly three small drawers in my room filled with things I will never throw away. They are these drawers that I rummage through when I need a little encouragement.
One of these drawers, the smallest, is in my bedside table. It’s about the size of a cigar box, and it’s filled with uplifting letters I have received. These notes, that probably took someone 5 minutes to write, are priceless gifts that keep encouraging even after years have passed. Some of them are the end-of-session letters I got from my counselors at HoneyRock. I remember how much I looked up to them, and how my heart soared when, a few weeks after camp ended, I (or rather my parents) would get a letter with their assessment of my talents and contributions to our cabin group. I remembered how much those letters meant to me when I was the one writing them to my own campers at the end of the summer two years ago. In that drawer is also a stack of notes that my senior year Spanish class wrote. We spent an entire class period at the end of the year just jotting brief notes of encouragement to each other. I had gone through 12 years of school with some of these kids, and even if we weren’t close friends it was great to read some of the things they liked or admired about me. The rest of the letters in that drawer are random, miscellaneous correspondences I have received from friends, and it always does my heart good to look through that drawer. Everyone should write encouraging notes to each other. And everyone should have a drawer like this.
I have two other desk drawers that are filled with academic and athletic accolades from high school. Certificates, medals, pins, and letter jacket patches. I was a pretty good student, you see, so besides my diploma in that drawer there are awards from the AP Board, the Principal, the school board, and the National Merit Corporation. I was also a pretty good athlete. Badminton, to be exact (yes, it is a real sport). So because of that I have a lot of medals and IHSA state qualifier pins and letter jacket patches. These are also great drawers to look through every once in while. It’s pretty gratifying to hold concrete representations of my past successes in my hands. I’m no longer an athlete, but I’m still a pretty good student, and you just don’t receive physical accolades like you used to in high school. Why is that? I miss it.
The additions to these drawers have slowed down somewhat significantly since I graduated high school. I don’t play sports so I don’t get any medals. Wheaton College doesn’t give out academic achievement awards, at least until I graduate. And I don’t get letters as much as I get emails, the nature of which is increasingly business. I guess the older you get, the less you need to be told that you’re awesome in the form of paper or medals. You just have to figure it out yourself. I’m sorry, but I don’t really agree with that. Everyone should be periodically told, outright, how great they are. I don’t do that often enough for other people, and I think I should start.
