I woke up to the most glorious summer day: a clear, sun-coated sky, tank top temperature, the meshed sounds of crickets and quiet.

Despite the heavenly back-end descriptors of that last sentence, the operative three words are this:

I woke up.

And if you are reading this, you woke up too.

We woke up! We’re awake and here! How lucky is that?!

Our theme this week is summer. And I’ve got to tell you, summer 2010 has been jam-packed with major juxtapositions. Joy, sorrow. Celebration, loss. Easy breezy, difficult. I was at a My Morning Jacket concert this week when I received via text some tragic news about a dear friend; I couldn’t help think Morning vs. Mourning.

There are moments where the two contrasting extremes cancel each other out and I feel like I’m idling in neutral. But more often than not, I keep going back to one of my favorite lines from my favorite play Our Town:

The character Emily turns to the Stage Manager and asks: “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? — every, every minute?”

Yes. This is life and we are living it.

Today at Mission Amy K.R. I am taking existential roll call: I want you to go to the comment section, type your name and and then type/shout “HERE!” And I mean it: when you type the letters H-E-R-E I want you to SHOUT them out LOUD. Remind yourself (and inadvertently also your co-workers down the hall) that YOU ARE HERE.

We’ve had some big, fancy, memorable missions here in the past. We have some pretty exciting missions scheduled for the upcoming weeks. But I’ll tell you what: today’s tiny, tucked-away-on-Thursday mission might be the most important yet.

HERE,

amy