Youthful Life: X

Truth - Sometimes life seems to be good to be true. Isn't it odd how we spend so much time waiting for calamity to strike. We are constantly on the lookout for strife, hardship, and challenge. Sometimes, on rare occasions it seems (or more often if we wide our perspectives), life really can be as good as feels. Learning to capitalize on those dissipating moments is a skill many of us have little to no experience in doing successful. We have to learn how to be happy. Seems implicit but reality shows us otherwise. This is content. "The secret to happiness is freedom... And the secret to freedom is courage." Thucydides I have a confession to make. I don't know how to be happy. I don't think I allow myself to be happy often enough to recognize it when I'm feeling it. I have grown accustomed to just settling for being mostly appeased but less than stellar. But as of late, I would say my post-collegiate years, I have been surrounded by happiness. I'

Truth - People spend a significant amount of their lives working. The work environment can be a wild place. Navigating it's hierarchies, pitfalls, and trick question is a job in an of itself. Being successful in your work is not just about the qualifications, talents, and skills you bring but build community, connection, and networking where you are, and beyond. It's about deciding how you want to show up at work, and holding yourself accountable to doing so. It's about finding that mythical sense of "balance." " Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony." Thomas Merton Starting a new job , in my case my first job, is a process. Navigating the workplace, particularly the organizational politics takes times, and figuring out where you fit into it all can be woefully confusing. Building connections and maintaining relationships honestly seems to be the main work that I've been doing with my task orien

Truth - Life is full of ambiguity. Things never happen the way that we imagine them to. As much as we try and plan it all out, life always does it's own thing. More often than not, things tend to work out for the better, or at least gravitate towards some semblance of relative normalcy. That randomness that we all dread and strive to avoid though can be inevitable. Sometimes we have to embrace the haphazard nature of life, and just go with it. Doesn't make it any easier venturing into the unknown. "There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met." William Butler Yeats   One of the most dubiously exhilarating, and simultaneously most terrifying things in life is moving to a new place. There's new people and places to discover. Things to do, food to try, and connections to be made - the possibilities are endless. At the same time, you're absolutely all alone, fear can be truly debilitating, and doubt can settle in. It's this con

Truth - Things rarely, if ever, work out the way we imagine them to. In fact, all the time spent obsessively trying to forecast the future only to be disappointed by the difference between our projected premonitions and reality, could be better spent trying to take things as they are. There's this part of humanity that desperately tries to make sense, meaning, perfect - what have you, out of the ambiguity of life. It's the paradox of predestination juxtaposed against the conceptualization of free-will. Are the two diametrically opposed, mutually exclusive, and the antithesis of one another? All I know is that people maybe vie for control because it gives them power to make things the way they want them instead of life running its unpredictable course. Who knows what will next. I think people just want some closure.  "I don't believe you ever get closure on anything. Things leave a permanent mark on you."  Allison Anders Life is messy, people. Life is r