Note: I can tell before I start writing tonight that this will be a long and over-fancy worded post. Ignore as wanted.

I am thankful to my mentors and my teachers because they give me glimpses of parts of what I am working on becoming. More accurately, they give me glimpses of things I can want to become. Most of them probably don't realize how much I look up to them.

Strong, but initiative-assuming actions. Steady shadows by the sides of public figures who work, often without recognition, to enable those they serve to be more recognized, to help the cause that they and those they shadow work in common for.

Quiet ones who whisper and message invisibly here and there, making their public messages scarce so that others can (and do) step forward and find their voice. And bold practitioners of radical transparency that use their voices not to drown out the speech of others, but to amplify it.

Those who know what's important, and get it done.

People who are imperfect, but who try. Not because they are not perfect, or despite it. They just try. Sometimes it works.

Those who are project debuggers, earnest helpers, magic problem-fixing wizards. And those who have the wisdom to hold back and let you struggle on your own.

Listeners; patient observers who give you counsel to be calm, to take a step back, breathe, and see. Fire-lighters, risk-takers, who jump in with both feet, improvise, make others - if not completely comfortable with such spontaneity, unable to avoid it but also unable to avoid appreciating its effects.

Translators and bridgers-of-worlds. People who merge differences together and people who branch off and create the new. People who learn from history but are not bound by it. Those who can start a fight; those who can fight and win, those who can graciously lose and learn from it, those who can befriend the ones who they have conquered or who have conquered them - and as an equal. Those who can make peace, and those who can live in peace.

Those who can stop; those who can never stop. Those who accept that they love and embrace those whom they love, and those who are loved and accept that they are loved.

Those who trust and who are trusted.

People with grand U-shaped hardwood desks bristling with monitors, titles, tenure, secretaries, frequent first-class plane tickets for a myriad of work engagements, and still have time to sit with youngsters with ideas; people with soaring houses who open them up to friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, and events. People who sleep on couches, have never owned a car, will never have money to donate to a cause because they give themselves instead. People who knew the choice that they were making would lead to a harder life, and chose it anyway because they thought it would do someone else more good.

Those who teach and share, and those who never cease to learn, and those who teach us through the way they learn themselves.

Those who lead well, and those who follow leaders well - and those who create leaders most of all (although I do not yet know what the word "leader" means).

People who enrich the world by being here. (Arguably, this should be everyone.) People who live paradoxes, people who are paradoxes, and people who resolve paradoxes in a weird way by just existing. (Or serve as proofs by contradiction.)

Those who are blessed; those who are happy. (I'd kind of prefer both, personally.)

I can't think of a good conclusion to this post. Eh. That's why this blog is for braindumps, and I post without censoring. Go.