About a decade ago, my wife put a message in a bottle and discovered it yesterday. OK, it wasn’t a bottle; it was a laptop. The bottle did not float with the waves and tides, but over time. She handed her laptop to me as we sat on the sofa.  Tears welled up in her eyes. “I can’t remember if I ever gave this to her,” she said. “She’s reading it now,” I replied.

The message was a beautiful, heartfelt letter of love and gratitude to her mother, who has now been gone for years. The letter cited examples of her mom’s love, patience, support, happiiness and grace amidst the challenges of life, marriage and parenting. At this time, having retrieved the message from the bottle of hard drive memory, the words painted a beautiful image of her mother to reminisce over. Two tidbits of wisdom stood out from these moments:

• Don’t keep your thoughts of love, praise and gratitude bottled up, i.e. buried in your memory. Share them with words and actions.
• There will always be messages that were not sent but are stored in your memory or heart. Take the time to review them in your mind, from the journals where they may have been written or in the bottle of your computer. There is much, and there are many people, for whom we should be grateful.