Youthful Life: X

" 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 cannot find peace by avoiding life." Virgina Woolf The start of a new year comes with inevitable reflection and forecasting. This period of looking back and looking forward often turns out to be less than sustainable or substantive. What would happen if we carried the mindset of being pensive about our lives, and aspirational about our futures throughout the duration of the year instead of just its end and onset? Resolutions do not have to be flimsy. If we choose to focus on tangible things, consistent behaviors, and our thought processes then we can make long-lasting changes. It's all about shift in perspective. Our vantage points have to change, and along with them how we choose to act and speak. If we can make changes there, then everything and everyone around us will do the same. We have the power to change. We have the power to change our situations and our outcomes, to a large extent. What we do with that power is up to us. We have the option to relinqu...

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." Barack Obama The start to a new year means inevitably the promising of resolutions that will most likely not be kept. The idea behind the tradition is noble but in practice rarely goes according to plan. Maybe it's because the declaration is arbitrary, or because its easier to fall into old habits than it is to make new ones. There's still merit to resolutions though but the most effective ones often are limited in their scope, or else involved a mindset shift. It's the difference between committing to a paradigm shift versus a one-off goal. One of mine this year is to be more mindful about my time and how I spent it. This is the year I reclaim my time. Time might be a social construct but it's one that guides the parameters of our realities and how we experience said reality. Where we spend in time is ...

Truth - Looking back is critical to helping us look forward. 2016. What a year. Let's let that statement marinate just a little bit. Who would have thought a year that brought us a flurry of amazing musical achievements in album form would pretty much be garbage in every other way possible. I kid, I kid. Perspective really is everything, and hyperbolizing about an abstract concept doesn't do anything to change it. It's when we stop, take a look around, and learn from our surroundings, with a little bit of review, that we know what to do next or at the very least what not to do.   "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." Barack Obama Can we please have a small discussion about the ways in which this year, namely 2016 aka the year the of our Lord's departure from this Earthly purgatory, has taken on its own persona and been anthropomorphized ...

Truth - It is not the end until the end arrives. Prematurely counting yourself out does nothing for you other than take you out of the equation. Sometimes breaking down is part of the process but what comes next is the important part. You build yourself back up, put yourself back together, and you press on. What other option is there? Bounce back, move ahead, and find your resilience.    " All of us need to begin to think in terms of our own inner strengths, our resilience and resourcefulness, our capacity to adapt and to rely upon ourselves and our families." Steven Pressfield Each year begins with the cliché sentiment of starting over but the point that is missed in understanding yourself to be restarting is that you don't really ever do so. We are the sum of our identities, beliefs, actions, words, and experiences. Our past, to some extent, writes our futures. We have to acknowledge where we came from, who we have been, and what we have done before we can p...

The 20s are all about reflection. There's something about looking back that always has this uncanny ability over us. You think back and all of a sudden you're transported to another day and time. Everything you felt just comes rushing back and you are bombarded with those emotions in a tidal wave of epic proportions. So many cringe-worthy awkward moments, embarrassing incidents, and of course those things/peiople you just want to forget ever happened. I've always wondered why we vividly remember the bad times and I've concluded that it's so we learn from them to move forward. The past is the past. Nothing stays the same. These are seasons of change.  2014 - the year of change. Wow. What a year! What can I say about the year that my life drastically changed forever? I guess there were several different phases I went though (key phrase there is through - as in, to move out of or passed). I started off the year with a severe melanch oly personality shift because...

The 20s are all about throwing it back. When this blog was first started I was in my senior year of high school. Four years later and I've reached just about the same point in my college experience. My first 6 months of posts were juvenile, misguided, and sometimes downright mean but I never deleted them so I could see who I was and how I thought about the world to compare it to how I understand things to be now. The one thing I do miss from those posts was the lighthearted cheeky humor. I made fun of everything in a somehow endearingly infusion of sarcasm with a diehard love of pop culture. With this post I bring it back. Enjoy and don't forget to be silly. It's okay. It's necessary. It's part of life. This is retrospect.    One of my many irrational desires is to be on an awards show. You know walk the red carpet, fake smile at photographers, make small talk with other celebrities, but most of all be one the cameras go to for a reaction during every segment ...