Since it’s Thanksgiving today, it seems like good timing to address a subtle yet surprisingly powerful shift that I’ve learned to make in the realm of gratitude.

Specificity of expectations is the biggest obstacle facing so many musicians (and, for that matter, every other human being). It’s easy to get into the trap of evaluating the value or satisfaction of something based on these expectations. It’s hard enough to objectively ask ourselves “where am I?” Hard becomes virtually impossible, though, when our own sincere thoughts are being drowned out by a sea of other questions: “Where should I be?” “Where are the people I envy?” “Where do others think I am?” “Where did I expect I would be by this point when I was younger?”

As a jazz musician, is it weird to cite the guy who sold me a bunch of cantaloupes as a bigger influence on my career than Duke Ellington? If you look at it that way then of course. As you might expect, though, there is a bit more nuance in here – Ted Xenelis and the crew at the Middlesex Fruitery have driven home the lesson of what it means to be a master practitioner.

When I heard the news of Robin Williams’ suicide I was saddened and certainly taken aback but not shocked. This is not because I had any inside information or because I’ve become jaded about the downfall of celebrities. Rather, I’ve become acutely aware that artists, performers, athletes, politicians and all other celebrities and other “successful” people are simply prone to the same struggles as the rest of us humans.

It’s 4:30 a.m. and, not surprisingly, I can’t sleep. My brain is not adequately developed to process this confluence of milestones. On the one hand, last night marked the passing of Kate’s aunt Dottie, with Kate by her side. On the other hand, this month marks the 10th anniversary of the beginning of our parenting journey. On the surface these are events related to one another only by emotional intensity, but there is more entanglement than that.

I’ve been chewing on the question of “why do I do it,” and I think I found the answer . . .

The air has been thick with “shoulda-been” birthdays, with Ana Grace’s 8th birth anniversary last weekend and my aunt Margie’s 73rd birth anniversary today. On Ana’s birthday a playground was dedicated in her name at Elizabeth Park in Hartford, and while the weather was uninviting, people flocked out to be there and I didn’t see a single person leave. Meanwhile, this weekend I will be celebrating Margie’s life and the music it inspired on Ripples in Baltimore to an audience of her devoted friends and family. Through it all, I can’t stop thinking about the spirit of human connectedness.

We’re not talking about healers in the New Age sense, although there’s nothing wrong with that either. The healers I refer to here are people with the courage and caring and compassion and commitment (stop me before I come up with more words beginning with “c”) to identify someone struggling and reach out to help.