Third: Practice the pause of appreciation. Every graduation pep talk I’ve ever given has ended with words about my father’s kid brother, Alex Vonnegut, a Harvard educated insurance agent in Indianapolis, who was well-read and wise. … One of the things he found objectionable about human beings was that they so rarely noticed it when they were happy. He himself did his best to acknowledge it when times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and Uncle Alex would interrupt the conversation to say, “If this isn’t nice, what is?” So I hope that you
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