Youthful Life: X

10/5/19 Dear Mommy, You are loved. We love you. I love you. You have lived a life well loved. That sentiment of a life well-loved is two-fold. You have been someone who has adored others with a love that can only be described as extraordinary, and been one to have been surrounded by love for all of your days. You were the embodiment of love. You were love exemplified. You were pure love in human form. What a grand gift it was to love and to be loved by you. Your love has been indescribable yet powerful beyond compare. Your love has been transcendent while being grounded. Your love has been everlasting even when we thought it would end. Your love, your love, your love, has changed the world, your world, our world, my world.             Mother to all, this life well-loved is represented by the number of people here and around the world thinking about you in this moment. Your impact is immeasurable. What you meant to people cannot ...

" An apology offered and, equally important, received is a step towards reconciliation and, sometimes, recompense. Without that process, hurts can rankle and fester and erupt into their own hatreds and wrongdoings." Margaret MacMillan Stop apologizing for the harm other people cause you . Stop forgiving people before they have done the work to ask for it or to change. Stop letting well-meaning people or “good intentions” dismiss their impact. It’s their job to own their impact; not yours to rationalize it away. Hold people accountable for their actions and their impact. People don't get to barrel through lives or the world without being prompted to look back and see what they've left in their wake. When we don't address the harm and its cause we deny ourselves healing, and closure, and let someone continue their behavior without knowledge of its impact. If we care about people, particularly those close to us, we will hold them accountable. We are obligated ...

“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”  Lois Lowry Lois Lowry's "The Giver" is my favorite book of all time, and whenever I have lost touch with the people of the world I reread it to remind of how people, their stories, and sharing them is what makes life vibrant. There are people in my life who have just been there but I have never taken the time to figure out how they got there. Someone being proximate to me should mean that I take the time, make the effort, and create the space to strive to understand them. People must be more than their utility to me. If I truly believe people are inherently invaluable, why then have I long treated those around me as static characters serving me in my life story instead of dynamic character with their own stories. I have spent so much prioritizing me, my plots, and navigating the chapters of  my life that I have never quite paused to read the stori...

"There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning" Jiddu Krishnamurti Sometimes I find myself in laughable situations. I just stop for a moment and realize that my life may actually be a sitcom sans audience participation or laugh track. Things happen and I'm just left with nothing else to do but take it in stride, make fun of myself, and keep on keeping on. Think about the all the things you were never taught but probably needed to learn sooner than you actually did. Families do us a disservice in some of the things they don't bother to teach us but even more so, we do ourselves a disservice when we don't take the time to teach ourselves . Who is ultimately responsible for what I know or don't know - me. I think being a lifelong learner is absolutely critical to living a full and dynamic life. ...

The 20s are all about accepting who you are. Everyone looks up to someone else. We all have at least one person that we admire for a multitude of reasons. Maybe it's their accomplishments or how they make you feel. Something about them just inspires you to keep striving on. They are what you aspire to be. They give you hope, courage, and empowerment. Look up in the sky; it's a bird; it's a plane; no it's the caped crusader.   Knowing who I look up to has always been easy for me to know. I cannot even begin to articulate the kind of people my parents are. What they have done for me cannot be described properly in words. It is beyond the plane of this Earthly existence and transcends all religiosity/spirituality. They have sacrificed so much to get me to where I am and for all their selfless work I am grateful. It is not just me though how they go about their lives daily is casually moving mountains. They save people left and right. They change lives, give hope, and s...

The 20s are all about being okay with not knowing. For some people, not having their future planned out down to the minute can be gravely terrifying while others relish in the spontaneity of their lives. Often the world of young people is split in two seemingly diverging paths - one that leads to jobs and family, and another that entails traveling on a whims' notice. The reality is you can have both, and most have a little bit of each. No matter what your happiness in life though comes from your inner satisfaction. Do you believe that you deserve to be happy? Some things are just beyond belief. When I was a little kid there was no problem that was beyond fixing when my dad said everything was going to be okay. I remember this one time I had been riding my bike around the cul-de-sac. I was recently training wheel free and zoomed around the curves of the asphalt like a speed demon on a mission. My helmet was fastened tight but I had neglected to put on my knee pads. One ino...

The 20s is all about recognizing your own mortality. Every single time I write one of these posts, I start it out the same way. It's just a short fragment sentence. Death. I'm going to write it again and I want you to say it out loud when you read it this time. Death. Now one more time and breath it out as you say it. Death. Before writing this post I went back and read a couple of my previous posts tackling this topic and I have to say they instantly make me cry every single time. The emotion behind them, the raw unfiltered words and I can vividly remember writing each one. Take a look back before looking ahead at a rough one( We All Fall Down - Center of the Universe ). No matter how far we go, we always get pulled back down to Earth. I'm going to write this post in a stream of consciousness just typing with my eyes closed, my fingers crawling all over my keyboard making light tapping noises, and my headphones in. This post is going to be one of those that make be a l...

The 20s are all about confusion. Every single day my newsfeed on Facebook is laden with articles, videos, and blog posts (I get the irony) from friends, internet personalities, and famous people alike. They all prescribe magical cures to all of life's troubles, particular those for young people. The age of the twenty-something is one of tawdry attempts at self-help admonitions, unwelcomed guest lectures from just about anyone you give your time to, and way too much reflexive over-analyzation. I don't believe any of it. There are no quick fixes, no miracle drugs, or sure fire things (save big G - Himself). There's not one way to be anything or anyone. All you are is yourself. Time to act my age. One thing I absolutely abhor is people telling me what to do. I don't even think I have a problem with authority, complying with people's orders, or doing what I am told, but the mere fact that some has ordered, commanded, or proclaimed that I must do something rubs ma...