Thursday, January 24, 2013

Nobody Loves No One

The title has nothing to do with anything, it was just a line in a song that I'm listening to and I found it oddly profound. Everyone loves someone in some way, no man is an island as much as he would like to think it (and that is coming from someone who pretends she's an island like it's her job). In some way or another everyone loves some part of someone. Maybe that is only for a week, maybe it is forever even after you are apart. There are some people who have these aspects of themselves that I have fallen in love with even though we aren't together. I guess that real and complete eternal love comes when you are more in love with a person's personality and facets than not. But I'll have to get back to you on that one because I don't know yet.

I am almost in tears as I write this, so much has happened and yet nothing has that I am overwhelmed by my emotions. Believe it or not, that doesn't happen too often. Not like this. So i'm trying to decide what to talk about first. (I'm putting off assignments and dinner until I say what I need to say, only I don't know what that is yet.)

Recently, I've been at a loss. The last couple of posts have been about that and it is something that I don't feel for long periods of time usually. More often than not I find my direction or I impose one on myself because I can't stand to just be spinning or sitting, heaven forbid, for any period of time. I'm like those ants that you try to get on your finger but they just keep hitting it and moving on. If they ever do crawl onto your finger then they are off in two seconds because there is another direction to go. So these past few months have been hard that way. If I don't feel myself moving, then I get a sense of peace that I am where God wants me to be and that, honestly, is enough for me for a long time. Until I ask Him again for confirmation.

But I haven't gotten that.

Or, I should say, I hadn't gotten it. Not in the way I expected. He speaks so directly sometimes that I miss it. I expect that same feeling of peace every time I ask for it. But He knows that it would not keep me moving. He has given me that reassurance through other venues and I'm grateful that I now know what He has been saying to me, even though I haven't been the best listener. I am on the right path. Various sources have given me that knowledge, many of them don't even know it. But let it be known that here I was and I moved and I walked into the dark. That is hard. It is scary. But the music of the night can change your life. If you keep standing underneath the streetlamp then you miss the stars. Sometimes you can't see the moon. Take that faith that there is a path in the dark. That if there is not a path, you will forge one and create the ultimate trail. You can always trust the Lord because He wants you to succeed more than anything. He has not given up on me, that alone has given me reason not to give up on myself, as tempting as that can be.

If you are reading this, if we have ever talked, know that I want the very best for you and that you deserve just that. The very best. If you say it often enough, then you believe it. That is not what makes it true, you can not believe something and it can still be true. Truth is not dependent on the human mind, but it stems from something bigger. Bigger than the sky. You can take part in that. Believe that you can and you can begin to find the truth. Regardless of whether you pay attention to what I am saying or not, the fact still remains that you are a creation of an infinitely perfect being and you have the ability to access that divinity. You have the right to the best things in life because you are the best thing. God believes that. I believe that. And you should too.

I didn't believed that for a long, long time. In my mind I was not worth anything. Yes, I had big dreams but it was for someone other than me. Someone who was more this or more that. Less this and less that. Never myself. This made me scared that I was living my life wrong because I wasn't like other people. I figured that if someone else was like me then that made Me okay. People couldn't think I was weird with any amount of validity because this other person was like that too. But there were some parts of my personality that were cognitively insuppressible. I could not hide that aspect of myself and that has become who I am in many parts. Mostly in private because otherwise people are thrown off by things I say or do.

I am a wonderer.

That was something I really discovered this week at the forum. This is also something that I have been thinking about for a long time too. Who am I and what is my purpose on earth? The answer that I've come up with is that I am meant to experience humanity and record it. The human experience. The little things that make reality. The parts of life that are magical, completely transcendental. What touches the soul. What numbs the emotions. Struggles. Successes. Loss. Love. And everything in between. I've always had the idea that I feel things different than other people. Whether that is true or not remains to be seen, however I do know that I can describe them differently in a way that people can understand. And that has to mean something.

What contributes to that is my constant sense of wonder at everything. Absolutely everything. I began to understand this when I was walking through one of the softest snow falls of the year and realized that I still feel the crinkle in the air between the flakes. That negative space is pure inspiration. I was walking home, it wasn't quite night, and I couldn't resist the urge to fling my arms out and feel as much of that energy as possible. I wanted to partake of it and drink it in. Pure, clean energy and magic. I doubt that a time in my life will come where I will not feel the delicacy of a snowflake and wonder. I wonder at how intricate it can be. How they can fall in that pattern. How they make me feel as though my soul has lifted me up to dance in the air among the flakes. The negative space clears my head, I can think in between the falling snow.

Rain is the same way. The time I feel the most beautiful is after I've been out in the rain and I've let it wash away all of the things I put up to hide in or hidden or ignored or suppressed. My soul explodes into my body and I no longer feel like a body, but rather a being that exists for that moment. For that sensation. To feel my hair fall in front of my face with a little curl in it while my toes push the ground away and I break out into a full out sprint. I feel as though my molecules absorb the energy around me and I can't stop them from moving. Whether it is joy or excitement or curiosity, I am enveloped in the incredible lightness of being.

Wonder.

I am here to answer my question. The thing that motivates me. If you have any idea what my question is, please tell me. I'm being completely serious. Text me, email me, tell me here if you don't want me to know who you are. But I need help figuring out what it is.

There are other things that I've noticed regarding relationships that I find interesting, but that is for another time. I talk about that too much anyways.

One theme that keeps coming up in my life recently, this is on a different note, is that I am single. Not in a depressing and sad way or anything. But maybe a little. Yesterday I went to the international cinema before I went scuba diving and realized something. At that moment in time I realized what I've been wanting all week. Someone. Someone who is there for me no matter what. I needed a body there to hold me tight and just be there. No one has ever really been there for me like that before, I've never cried on a shoulder. Yes, I've missed my chances for that. There have been opportunities and I didn't recognize that until they had passed. However, that doesn't mean that it is something I don't want. Yesterday I needed more than anything a shoulder to cry on and someone to hold me close to their chest so I can feel their warm breath on my hair and know that I am safe and I am important. That they care that I feel happy but it is okay that I don't right then. I curled up in a little ball on the seat and just let everything from the past little while wash over me and it made that lack of human physical contact even more noticeable. But that is not something I have right now, and that is okay. Everything is essentially okay and that is good and right. I don't know why I added this, but I did. The feeling could go away tomorrow, or next week, who knows. But it is still here and there is nothing I can do about it.

Now I feel like I can go do some work, finally. I hope that you have a wonderful rest of your day and week and I pray that you receive the best and that you begin to notice the wonder all around you.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

2012: You and I were born to roam

I wanted to post this entire song, but I have other things in mind for this post. So, you should take a look HERE and check it out because it is beautiful and I just have to share it with someone. I'm going through my whole iTunes library and while there is a huge amount of bad songs, there are some gems. This was one of them. I'm making a couple more mixes for 8Tracks from them, so check there if you need some new music.

I've been thinking a big about the fact that this is now 2013. Life has moved on so quickly. I feel as though I have not written in a long, long time. Written as in really written exactly what I wanted to and in such a way that I could feel good about it afterwards. Funny how that goes, it is like I"ve been lost the past little while, a hollow shell of what I have been. Emotion just were not as strong, I was the epitome of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb". I was just happy to sit there in a static and forever gray state. It was not depression, I do not want you to think that. I just wasn't there. I wasn't anywhere. My chest was empty along with my heart, mind, and imagination. Creativity was impossible. I am good at covering things like that, and I doubt anyone really noticed. I just seemed like an absent minded professor.

Thank goodness that I can tell someone this. I can't describe how good it feels to get this down and figure out just what happened. This blog always listens to me and regardless of whether someone chooses to read this or not, I know that someone has already listened. For that I am grateful.

Now I am inviting you to come into my world. I will try to describe things as well as I can so that you may be able to forget that it is me writing it. In my philosophy writing class, we discussed good prose. My professor said that the best prose is the kind that acts as a window through which the reader can gaze through it and see, unobscured, the object on the other side. Good prose does not have faults in the window because you do not want to attract attention to the writing, if what people remember the most from something you wrote is the way that you wrote it, then you did it wrong. I think that is one of the main things that brought me here. I want to write again and I've been so worried about writing it well instead of just putting on paper the thoughts as they come. I never know what I'm going to finish the sentence with until I reach that point. That is how I find myself and that is how I channel that. If I can somehow, even though I am extremely inadequate, allow you to feel what I am and see things how I do then I would know I am doing something in this world. Making some mark.

The thought crossed my mind the other day regarding how I want to be thought of, this was sparked by a comment from a friend. I realized that I didn't know how I wanted people to think of me because it had never occurred to me that people think of me at all. As far as I am concerned, I come into someone's life and then I am out again without having made any lasting mark. The concept of people remembering me is ridiculous and I think that is why I started this blog. So I could remember myself. This is not a sad thing, it is merely something that I've always thought. The first time my mom told me that my brother had said in his prayer that he was glad I'd be home soon from school for Christmas made me cry. The idea that someone actually cared that I would be with them soon was foreign and I couldn't believe it. In my mind I have never been worth it, not in the sense that other people are. I have always felt in the background. I move, I change, I do the behind-the-scenes work that is hardly ever given credit. And I have liked it that way, with that I can pass through people's lives and I can experience what they are and then I can move on when they do. No attachment because everything changes, and the only attachment is in the moment. At one point that person and I were friends and we are not now, but that moment was perfect. That kind of thing. Finding out that people cared really made me think about my life. I still do not think that anyone thinks of me unless I am there with them, but I thought about the way I act and if that reflects my mindset. And it does, completely. I've never been able to understand why I act the way I do, not really, until now. I don't know why I bring that I up, but there it is, maybe I'll need it later.

The best way I can think of to organize my thoughts is by putting up on here my favorite pictures from the past year, many of these have honestly changed my life or have at least had an impact on the way I view the world, myself, and others.

This picture sums up the entire year for me. 2012 has been a year of incredible risks of every kind and I am intensely grateful for all of them that I took and I regret those that I did not because I can see how those that I have changed my life for the better. The universe said to me, "it's time to take a risk, sweetheart. " because it knew that I had never really done that before. I've been enjoying standing on the edge of the cliff with my parachute, feeling the exhilaration of the possibility before me. This year was the time for me to step off that cliff and stop talking.

This is me. Not many people know that, and honestly more people know it than I am aware of. There is no place that I feel more like me than when I am standing there alone looking at something like that. I stand there and I wonder what could be more perfect. Of course, having someone there to experience it with me would be great but the thing is I don't know anyone who experiences things like I do. I soak them in and allow them to fill me up. Breathing, thinking, and not wanting to talk. Darling, let's be adventurers. I think of that song that I linked to the top whenever I look at this picture.


How beautiful would that be? This goes along with what I was saying before about not wanting to be thought of. There is nothing that I do that is worthy of being thought about because there are so many great things that could inhabit your mind. I am not important. But when there is someone that I care about, I want to be able to exist like this even if only for a small amount of time. This was a theme of learning for this year.


This has changed my life. I quote this all the time and I constantly think of it. Whenever I have a hard day, or I feel alone in a class or something, I look around and I notice the art that is around me. Everyone is beautiful and everyone deserved to be thought of in this way. Regardless of your station, ethnicity, history, or any other category. Everyone creates art that should be loved. That is what I have been trying to do this year. I look at the way someone holds their cup of tea and that is beautiful, etc. There is a poem by Derrick Brown that I've posted on here a couple of times, but there is a section where God shows him a screen with his life on it and over every image flashes the word 'Holy'. Every aspect of life is holy. Everyone does things that are beautiful and holy. If you take the time to see the sensitive and quiet moments to find that, you will know what I mean. It is the breath before the kiss. It is the way someone does their hair. The way someone eats their Subway sandwich. Holy.



Remembering to take things one at a time and appreciate the small things is what has kept me sane. This list helps me put things in perspective. While it is a little silly, okay it is hugely silly, it actually helped. I could look at it and realize the things that I actually want out of life. A yoga guru that I've been watching says that "If you sweat and laugh once a day, then that is the healthy life." And I believe that, in addition to "Anything can be cured with saltwater: tears, sweat, or the sea." I am still hopelessly romantic about the sea, but regardless I am able to think less on where I am now and instead where and who I want to be.

I needed to do that a huge amount this year. More than ever before. Initially, I could find peace and joy though my interactions with others. That is what energized me and that is how I kept myself from going crazy. However, this year it has been filled with much more introspection. Being with myself is when I have felt the most peace. Experiencing things on my own through a lens that is marred only by my own perceptions of the world has been freeing to the highest possible degree. Freeing myself and freeing my spirit. Another yoga instructor says that in everyday life, if you are stressed or lost just find your pose. find your breath. and there you will find yourself.


In keeping with this theme, I have had to figure out what it means to truly be alive. To experience things. To somehow figure out how to open my heart to the world, to pain. It goes right along with this other picture. I am afraid to say things, to love people, and afraid to go some places. I didn't realize it was because they would hurt until I read this. And I knew that was why. Those things matter and up till now I have been living somewhat of a half life. Now I am doing things that matter and can actually make a difference in my life. Up until now I have been the only one who knows these things. I hope you can do something useful with them.

What matters are these things. In the end, no one cares how you did in college. No one asks you how many books you read or how much music you wrote. Quantity does not matter. Nothing with quantity matters. How many people have you loved? That is not the question that is important. The real question is how have you loved? how deeply? how truly? how completely? Did you learn what true love is? Did you learn who you are? Did you find beauty in the world around you? Did you try things that scared you and did you learn from them? Did you make mistakes? How did you use that knowledge?

Those are the things that matter. I haven't figured anything out. Not really. But I am further along in my confusion than I was at the beginning of the year. I've listened to music that moved me, I found out some previously unknown aspects of myself, I found beauty, there was sweat and tears and laughter and the ocean, I made friends who have changed my life for the better, and I know my Savior more at the end of this year than I ever could have last January. Is there any other way to measure success?

Thanks 2012, you mattered to me.