I felt tonight a strong urge to reevaluate my ideals and values before embarking on the week ahead. I don’t want to just float through life…mostly. I sometimes do, on rainy days or days when I am really tired. But mostly, I don’t want to just float through it. I want to freaking enjoy it. I want to be completely present in the midst of spring green leaves sprouting from trees, blue sky sunshine and even sadness.
I am twenty-four. I would like to think that I have learned truths about myself over the years, and lessons that, if I pay attention to, could help me live this life better...and to be relevant, keep me from just floating through it.
1. I need breakfast I will be cranky if I don’t have it, and I will likely eat something that isn’t very good for me at all, and then continue that trend for the remainder of the day.
2. I need sleep. I spent my first year in college pretty sleepless. I also gained weight and experienced a lot of frustration and aloneness. My sophomore year, I made sleep a priority, and I have never been as effective as I was then. I had a desire to exercise, mostly because I had the energy, because I got enough sleep.
3. I live better when I eat healthy. I did something before. It worked. I stopped doing it. It quit working. Maybe I should try that again. Its basic premise operated from – “love yourself enough to do what’s best for you”. I have also discovered that this motto is an ongoing battle, and I wish is wasn’t.
4. I need sleep. Did I say that already? I mean it. I really do.
5. I like to run, and if I don’t eat healthy or get enough sleep, I fool myself into thinking that I don’t like to run, and that’s a lie.
6. I am listening to John Mayer…Waiting on the World to Change. I can’t wait on mine to change. I have to do things to initiate change. If I need help, I need to ask for it, because other than super heroes and magicians, regular everyday people can’t read my mind. If I want to be at a healthier weight, I need to move more. If I have no motivation to move, I need to get more sleep and make eating well a priority. If I want to be more content with life, I have to quit being frustrated with the fact that I am not. I have to look at what is instead of what isn’t. And, I can’t can’t can’t underestimate God’s part in it all, or box Him off to handle the portion of my life that I am comfortable with Him handling. I have to trust Him with it all.
7. I am happiest when I am most at peace with Meredith and God’s decision to make me the way that he did. I am most miserable when I view the world through what I do not have as opposed to what I do. I love giving to others, but I cannot do that effectively unless I give to myself, and care for myself. I make impulse decisions for comfort and solace when I am discontent, then regret them, wonder why I made them in the first place, and then resent myself more than before. Then my soul suffocates.
8. I am not crazy or stupid or a failure. I am not the only person in the world that struggles with life. Other people worry about what other people think of them, other people make mistakes and wish they would have done things differently. But change and healing are possible. I have seen it happen. Good things do come. Bad days don’t last forever. They really only last twenty-four hours, and about sixteen if you count the time you're asleep. Red red tulips come up from the ground in spring, reminding us to treasure the simplicity of natural beauty, beckoning us outside, reminding us to reevaluate where we are, and that sometimes a little change - like the change from winter to spring - is the little push we need to keep us from digging ourselves deeper into the rut that seems to be continually tripping us down into disappointment…nudging us out of the rut to bloom…
9. I need people in my life. I can’t do it alone, and I wasn’t meant to. I spent a shit load of money at a college I felt like God wanted me at. I left with a degree that will never make me a living and a large sum of really spectacular friends. What this tells me is that money can buy friends. And the people that influence and impact my life are really important to God, because He felt it necessary for me to spend a lot of money on them.
10. My parents will never ever be all that I want them to be, and I will never ever be all they want me to be, and the sooner we each realize this, and focus on what we actually are to each other, the sooner we an start having a less dysfunctional relationship.
11. I don’t understand the sovereignty of God. I don’t understand why some really great and influential and kind and sincere people die horribly tragic and gruesome deaths. I don’t understand why children who have no choice are born into this world with terminal diseases, or why there are people that have a lot of money that spend a lot of their money on things that break or perish or stain while a good chunk of the worlds population drink from the same water source that bodily fluids seep into, and watch their children die slowly from starvation. However, I see so much good in this world. I see true love, the kind that was fought for in Princess Bride, for real, and I see people that need each other find each other. I see people being healed and restored and loved. I see beautiful little children learning and experiencing life’s lessons raw and with wonder and it gives me hope for our future.
I saw an older couple today who looked like they have been married for many years…since before electronics made their debut and filthy rich talentless celebrities populated our streets…before milk was available in plastic cartons and injected with added unnecessary unhealthy hormones…since before divorce was socially acceptable. I am just going to say now that I will not do this story justice with my words. It was one of the most moving encounters with two strangers that I think I have ever had. They clearly had a love for each other that is so very rare, it literally caused this salty watery substance to flow from the ducts of my eyes while standing behind the bar. They were holding hands, she had an oxygen tank, and he helped her up the concrete step into our store for their first ever Starbuck’s experience, to wait out their time before her doctors appointment across the parking lot. They were eager to try something new, something they had never had before, and they had the same childlike look of wonder and joy in their eyes that I mentioned before, that I also sometimes assume ends after the age of five. They ordered two tall lattes, nothing sweet because they “better start off slow their first time, and work their way up” and then they sat at a table, face to face and just really enjoyed each other for the next thirty or so minutes. They had that air of ease and contentment surrounding them, even after all these years, despite her oxygen tank and their aging bodies; this, more than just about anything else, gives me hope for our future…and makes me want to run over Paris Hilton - and all that she represents - with a ginormous lime green monster truck.
I see lonely people making friends, meeting new people, finding out that they don’t have to live this life in isolation. And I see how so much of our lives are ordained and sacred, even if I don’t understand why or how…and it is encouraging to know there is Someone above me, Someone that defines wisdom and is the concentrated embodiment of all the things that we as a human race truly need, looking out for me and scooshing me along, sometimes in big foot steps, sometime just on my tip toes, sometimes against my will…but scooshing me nonetheless.
Now, I am going to sleep...see again numbers 2 and 4...
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