Youthful Life: X

“Everyone longs to be loved. And the greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving.” Mr. Rogers I am a certified loverboy. I am a romantic. I am believer in the all powerful nature of love. Never have I ever been in love. When I started writing this blog I was 17 years-old, and now I am 30. What a life that has been lived and one with so much left to experience. There is so much discourse about how love, relationships, dating, etc. have changed as generations take the helm of those experiences and the introduction of technology both in dating apps, and social media has radically changed our access to people and information about them. Is it supposed to be easier? Has social media and the endless barrage of swipes, taps, likes, messages, etc. changed our love lives for the better or has it made us gutted connections leaving vapid exchanges in their place? To be this age and to not had that seemingly major human experience can be anxiety-induci...

“Taking care is one way to show your love. Another way is letting people take good care of you when you need it.” Mr. Fred Rogers There's a difference between feeling like we know people and the actual knowing of them. Oftentimes we mistake the former for the latter. People we have encountered who seem to share themselves with us so freely. We know all this information about them, but that necessarily mean we know them. What makes the knowing real is getting the emotions, the feelings, the experience of living through all those moments. It may cost us something to share our stories but it definitely requires a labor to give the truth of what an experience meant to us. We have to be able to distinguish between knowing and knowing with depth. Maybe we feel connected to people quickly because we are living in a time of strong disconnection. Maybe people have been deprived of substantive connection. Maybe we're not used to people being genuine in their vulnerability with us.  Rad...

"The need for connection and community is primal, as fundamental as the need for air, water, and food." Dean Ornish Giving up on people with purpose can provide us peace. Spending time away from people who forsake us helps provide us the necessary clarity to choose to let them go. Sometimes you just don’t check-in with people and suddenly two weeks, a month, or 6 months have passed. Let it be. Resist the urge and eventually it goes away. Flimsy connections fade when not reinforced especially when no solid foundation is to be found. This is not the people we may not talk to for months or years at a time but remain bonded to steadfast. This is the people who never quite make it past the constant assurance phase, and when that affirmation is no longer provided, we question the connection or feel like its dissipated. We know the difference. We have to listen to that difference. People are not meant to be so much effort. We don't have to win people over. People are not mean...

" There is nothing so cleansing or reassuring as a vicarious sadness." David Rakoff Onward - a word for the year. It's time to move on. It's time to move. It's time. Onward we go. Letting go of things or people who do not serve us can be one of the most challenging and liberating things we can do for ourselves. We can spend so much time trying to rationalize, make things or people fit, hold on when in reality often the solution is the simplest, that people or things are not supposed to be there and we need to let them go. I have found that some simple distance is exactly what is needed to recognize the lack of reciprocity. How different do we feel to be separate from people or things. If we notice there's a shift in our contentment, peace, or joy - for the better - that's a clear sign that whatever we've taken a break from is probably a cause of some unnecessary stress, hardship, or discontentment. What's the logical solution? Let it go.  Walk away...

"You will be too much for some people, those are not your people." If they wanted to, they would. If there's a want, there's a will to make it happen. Meditating on those words the past few weeks has been a much needed reminder about how lackluster people truly can be. It's a recognition of laziness, disinterest, or pure apathy. It's the woes of pining, pleading, and giving power to people who cannot be bothered to choose us in return. If people wanted to communicate with us, spend time with us, be present with us, remember things significant to us, show up for us, care about us, love us, whatever - they would. What and who we choose to spend time on tells us what matters to us. If people are not willing to make time for us, make us happen, and make our connection thrive then we have to be able to address that truth. They don't want to. We cannot will people into being better for us. They have to want to be, and then they have to be. It's a two part p...

" Real strength has to do with helping others." Fred Rogers Cannot believe I'm writing my annual birthday blog post. What a year it has been. What a year it really has been. What a year it has been. This has been the worst year of my life, and there's no spinning it. The loss was too great. The impact was too pervasive. The devastation was too life-changing. It's so challenging to properly weigh the scales on evaluating the most surreal year of my life. My mom passed away. Everything in my head is organized into the before, and then there's the after. It's the jumping off point. It's the reset. If there's no acknowledgement of that, there's nothing for us to talk about. Everything from that morning (5:03AM) forward has been different. Everything from that point on is just the aftermath of the biggest heartbreak of my lifetime to date.  Everything is just the falling action from a climax that should have never came. How could this be my life s...

"There are times when explanations, no matter how reasonable, just don't seem to help." Fred Rogers I don't feel anything. I should feel more. Everything is just kind of empty. Ya know, or maybe you don't know. It may be an odd thing to say but I haven't felt the emotion of anger in such a long time. I cannot even the remember the last time I was genuinely mad about anything. There's no rage just beneath the surface. There's no ferocity waiting to come out. There's no burning desire to burn everything down. I'm fine, and that's the problem. I'm just fine. Not great. Not horrible. Just in the middle of meh. To me it's so clear how fundamentally different I am now. After what happened I've changed. I don't know how other people cannot see it. Who I was before no longer exists. I'm a person transformed by, touched by, and most visibly marked by death. I am bathed in it. I smell of it. It's right behind my eyes that ha...

" You haven’t healed, I can tell from how cruel you are.” Warsan Shire We're all carrying things with us. Some of things we're carrying visibly weigh on us while others are cloaked but remain heavy nonetheless. The thing about heaviness is that we have the potential to transform it. Oftentimes we get caught up in believing that the hardships we carry will be part of us for our entireties. In reality, we can shift the weight, redistribute it, or even better lighten the load. I don't think we ever really unload all that has stayed with us but I do believe that we can compact it, extract its essence, and convert it into something more manageable or even useful. What a powerful sentiment. There's hope in that.  If we don't have to hold all this heaviness forever that can mean a great deal for us. That means that how we feel, what we're holding, and how we're carrying it will not always be this way. Things aren't hopeless. While some things may...

"Empathy is simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of you’re not alone.” Brene Brown I saw a tweet the other day that stopped me in my tracks and made my jaw drop. How could someone so succinctly summarize this seemingly convoluted concept I had rattling around in my head. She said, "Americans are really good at acute compassion, but pretty bad at chronic empathy. We without questions, haul strangers out a raging flood, give blood, give shelter. But we are lousy at legislating safe, sustainable communities, at eldercare, at accessible streets and buildings. It is the long-term work that makes the disasters less damaging. But we don't want to give to the needy, we want to save the endangered. We don't like being care workers, we want to be heroes. The world does not need more heroes.  We need more care." Sigrid Joy Ellis We struggle with sustained care. We want to ...