Inspiration

There are few times in life when you feel truly inspired. I just finished watching Julie and Julia. I know it's silly, but I want to cook now! But it's not the cooking part that I'm interested in no matter how much I love food or getting messy with flour, but the finding yourself part that I really want.

I want what she had... no, what she found. I want the stability she created for herself and the independence. The obsession she had. The creativity. But most of all, I want to know that I can do something if I put my mind to it. I want to write a blog that people actually follow. And the time and commitment she had to doing it!

But I guess that's why they call it a movie. I'm just in college. And I'm poor. I need a hobby that doesn't cost money! Or time for that matter.... Does such a thing exist?

Stop

We have painters at our house climbing on the roof. They're out all day in the hot sun and are drinking from the hose when they get thirsty. So, yesterday afternoon, I brought them some cold, filtered ice water. They thanked me profusely. We got into talking and come to find out they're in college. One's going for his bachelor's in 6 years and the other for his masters in early childhood guidance in 7 years. And it occurred to me, what brought them here? Why painting houses? They're there from 9am - 8pm with one 1-hr break for lunch and it's just the two of them. Everyday. All week.

What else don't I know? Where is the car next to me going on the highway? Why do some people seem so forlorn while others so happy? What happened to them today? Did their spouse get a promotion? Did their child die?

Step out of your life for a moment and ask someone how they're doing. Next time you're at your little sister's graduation or you're on your way to work and passing a wreck - think about it. Your life could be so different.

I poured a glass of water down the drain today because it was 'old' and too warm to the taste. That glass in a different location could mean so much to someone other than me. Don't take what you have for granted. We often don't think about our actions until after we've committed them. If we just cared a little bit more, just a minuscule bit, everything would be so different. Just stop once in your day. Just once.

Elephant Love

Love is a many splendored thing
Love lifts us up where we belong
All you need is love

Please, don't start that again

All you need is love

A girl has got to eat

All you need is love

She'll end up on the street

All you need is love!

Love is just a game

I was made for loving you baby
You were made for loving me

The only way of loving me baby
Is to pay a lovely fee

Just one night
Give me just one night

There's no way
'Cause you can't pay

In the name of love
One night in the name of love!

You crazy fool
I won't give in to you

Don't, leave me this way
I can't survive, without your sweet love
Oh baby, don't leave me this way

You'd think that people would've had
Enough of silly love songs

I look around me and I see
It isn't so, oh no

Some people wanna fill the world
With silly love songs

Well, what's wrong with that?
I like to know
Cause here I go again
Love lifts us up where we belong
Where eagles fly
On a mountain high

Love makes us act like we are fools
Throw our lives away
For one happy day

We could be heroes
Just for one day

You, you will be mean

No, I won't

And I, I'll drink all the time

We should be lovers

We can't do that

We should be lovers
And that's a fact

Though nothing, would keep us together

We could steal time

Just for one day
We could be heroes
Forever and ever
We could be heroes
Forever and ever
We can be heroes

Just because I
Will always love you

I...

...Can't help loving...

...You.

How wonderful life is

Now you're in the world.

Disruptions

Everything's falling apart. People are leaving. School is ending. Lives are changing. I don't want this to happen, but it is. I accept it, but I don't have to like it.

I want to settle into one place.
I don't want a summer house and a winter home.
I want me and I want people who want to be with me for me.
I want ordered spontaneity, not sporadic rules.
I want to be interested and interesting.
I don't want to be the "other" person.
I don't want to be the topic of conversation when I leave a room.
I want to be his topic of conversation when I leave the room.
I want to bond with myself, not to be lonely.
And I want the mental capability to be patient...

Yet, even with all the disruptions, I can feel a sense of routine starting to come into place. As if the world was finally tired of people destroying it so it heated up the global climate, melted the icecaps, flooded the land, killed everything in its path, and wiped the slate clean to start new again. Fresh. As if cleaning out a wound. Sure... it doesn't look all that great, but it looks better than when it had infection in it. And it'll look even better when it's healed.

It's starting. I can feel it. Now, I just have to make sure I don't pick at the scab...

Yin and Yang

It's a weird feeling to be rejected and wanted all at the same time. The person you avoid most wants you, yet the one you adore has no interest in you.

I tell myself all the time that things happen for a reason... That if I had gone on a field trip with my Science Olympiad team in high school to Chicago, I wouldn't have gotten the multi-thousand-dollar scholarship that spanned almost 2 full years of college. If I had gotten that promotion at work, I would never have met all the amazing people when I worked at Disney World. If I had taken the full-ride scholarship to Northwest, I wouldn't be with the fabulous roommates I have now and would not be traveling to France next summer.

So... now that I have been rejected by someone I cared for, what will happen? Where will this lead me to? Who will I meet and what will I experience now? I know it will be better than what I have now. It's the transition to getting there that's hard. I hate waiting. Whether that's because I'm an American who's always on the move or because I'm impatient or lonely and want the companionship, it's the one thing in life right now that's keeping me positive.

Or rather, I hope something good will come of this....

How do you keep your eyes on the light at the end of the tunnel if you don't know which way is out?

Dating

It's teasing, flaunting, a mating ritual. It's body language, seduction, flirting, and gestures. It's companionship, courting, social, intimate, kissing, sex, holding hands, not touching, eating, watching, waiting, and always and forever wishing.

It's an endless circle of doors closing and windows opening and soon you don't know which way is up or where you started from to begin with. Your mind gets trapped in a labyrinth where the things that feel so good are the same that bring about the worst. And when you want something so bad you don't care anymore of the consequences, the instant you get it is when you start to rethink your decision.

It's an audition for a partner for life. For LIFE. Whether that be male, female, neither, both, or 15 cats... it's someone to keep you company. It's about self-gratification and trial relationships. It's nothing serious that can turn into something way too serious. It's about finding faults in everyone else and hiding the ones in yourself.

But yet, it's about finding yourself. About finding what you like or what you don't like. It's about interaction and feeling wanted. It's about going farther in debt and taking time away from everyone else, but it's also about finding happiness and a steady path in life.

I believe things happen for a reason; if someone loves you enough, even if you hurt them, they will continue loving you; and that life must be lived. So for whatever happens in life, let it happen. Leave it be and just be you. You will find your own crowd and your one penguin to dance around with for eternity.

Just give it time. And live.

Chick Flicks

P.S. I Love You, Pride & Prejudice, Titanic, Dirty Dancing, Pretty Woman, Ever After - chick flicks. What is it about them that makes our heart melt? From Gone With the Wind and Grease to Moulin Rouge and The Notebook, they tell the perfect story. Whether it's falling for your best friend named Harry or committing suicide because you can't be with your Romeo, they always know what women want to hear. And no matter how extreme or different the plot is, the story is always the same. The woman is trapped. She meets a man who sets her free. There's conflict. And then they're together and forever in love.

Does this appeal to women because they feel like they're constantly trapped? And if so, who's fault is that? Disney is a pro at chick flicks. They help mold us to believe that somewhere out there our Prince Charming is waiting to carry us away on his white horse and that in the meantime we should fight the evil stepmother who prevents us from having what we deserve. Delightful, isn't it? Even my own mother has told me as a child to not let any man treat me as anything less than "a princess."

But that sort of thing doesn't really happen. We find a suitable husband, settle down with a dog and small house with a white picket fence, and have 2.5 kids that we take to soccer practice every saturday morning. I see no white stallion awaiting. And what man in his right mind would willingly love a woman (the bane of his sex's existence) for eternity?

Some movies are a little more realistic than others... Afterall, it's not everyday that a man named Wesley will become a dreaded pirate that follows your kidnappers, climb up a cliff to fight a giant, outwit an Argentinian with poison, come back from the dead, and still save you from the prince that's trying to marry you in front of a priest that can't say the word "marriage" correctly. However, at the same time, how realistic are those movies? How often do you REALLY meet someone online that isn't 49-years-old and still living in his mother's basement? Or have you actually ever heard of two secret agents finding out after years of being married that they love each other unconditionally? No. It doesn't exist.

So should I give up all my whimsical flights of fantasy now? I mean, if I'm just going to graduate from college, get a job, settle down with a man, and take my kids to soccer practice then that's what I should look forward to, right? Why waste time dreaming up something that could never be true? Am I still too childish inside? Am I so naive to think that it could still come true? Not the pirate or secret agent part, but could someone really take me away on a white horse?

But what if I'm so busy trying to find the perfect guy that I take a really great guy for granted and pass up an amazing opportunity? He wouldn't even have a chance. Especially when comparing him to someone like Noah from The Notebook or William from A Knight's Tale... I haven't even met him and my standards for him are already impossibly high. Poor boy. He never saw it coming.

To Want

What makes you want something? What attracts your attention so strongly that you suddenly can not live without it? It could be the pretty colors, the way it shines in the sun, or a many number of things. Normally if we see something we want, we take it. Whether it's actually purchasing it, picking it up off the ground, or perhaps (for some) even stealing it.

But what do you do if it has a life of its own? Take, for instance, a person. You find someone you are truly happy with on so many levels. You want them. Maybe it's because of how they look or what pretty colors they wear. Maybe it's the way they shine or the way they move when you touch them. Either way, you want them. But what happens if they don't want you back?

And how do you go about living once you realize what is missing in your life does not want to be a part of your life?

But what is worse - hearing that you're not wanted or telling someone who wants you so desperately that you don't care for them?

Lucky

Something that is new to people is often unusual, strange, odd, and probably wrong. I will be the first to admit that I thought some new-fangled gadget or whatnot was weird. But just because I didn't know anything about it does not mean that I didn't like it. "You can't judge a book by its cover." "Don't knock it 'til you've tried it." There's a million sayings that go to prove a point, but who wants to listen to sayings?

The same goes for people. Just because someone is different than you does not mean that they are weird, strange, or wrong. Pointing out the obvious non-similarities is fine, however, making fun of them is not. But what's even worse than that are those that don't know that they're doing it. That is what really hurts.

Ignoring a situation does not make it go away instantaneously, but talking about it normally only clears the mind of half the party, leaving the other to dwell on the situation. So what is one to do?

I don't like pity. I don't like when other people pity me and I hate pitying others. I know just how lucky I am to be alive and I know I take it for granted every day. Sometimes I wish other people would realize that as well.

If you had a pen....

Suppose someone gave you a pen – a sealed, solid-colored pen.

You couldn’t see how much ink it had. It might run dry after the first few tentative words or last just long enough to create a masterpiece (or several) that would last forever and make a difference in the scheme of things. You don’t know before you begin.

Under the rules of the game, you really never know. You have to take a chance! Actually, no rule of the game states you must do anything. Instead of picking up and using the pen, you could leave it on a shelf or in a drawer where it will dry up, unused.

But if you do decide to use it, what would you do with it? How would you play the game?

Would you take the pen in hand, plunge right in and just do it, struggling to keep up with the twists and turns of the torrents of words that take you where they take you?

Would you write cautiously and carefully, as if the pen might run dry the next moment, or would you pretend or believe (or pretend to believe) that the pen will write forever and proceed accordingly?

And of what would you write: Of love? Hate? Fun? Misery? Life? Death? Nothing? Everything?

Would you write to please just yourself? Or others? Or yourself by writing for others?

Would your strokes be tremblingly timid or brilliantly bold? Fancy with a flourish or plain?

Would you even write? Once you have the pen, no rule says you have to write. Would you sketch? Scribble? Doodle or draw?

Would you stay in or on the lines, or see no lines at all, even if they were there? Or are they?

There’s a lot to think about here, isn’t there? Now suppose someone gave you a life…

(By David A. Berman)