Youthful Life: X

“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...

" Every person has a different view of another person's image. That's all perception. The character of a person, the integrity, that's who you are." Steven Alford The way we understand the world and how we situate ourselves within it is unique to our perspective. There is something both distinctly remarkable, and isolatingly unsettling about that. We are the only ones who go through what we do - in the ways that we do. Think about headaches, visibly no on else knows what when have one, but we ourselves feel an intense pain. That pain though is felt in the most literal sense by us, and us alone. There can be a sharp difference between the ways that we see ourselves and how others see us/experience us. Similarly, who we believe ourselves to be is not ho others experience us as. When asked how friends, family, or coworkers would describe us, often our answers are different than we would say about ourselves. What is the meaning of that dichotomy? If we believe...

Truth - Each day we write our life stories. I want my story to always be one of those truly breathtaking epics of old. I want to live a life of navigation, adventure, and exploration always. I want to be challenged, pushed, and moved out of my comfort zone constantly. I want life to be exhilarating, terrifying, and shocking. I want amusement, gut-busting laughter, and surprise. I want randomness, inquiry, and mystery. I want passion, fervor, and zeal. I want it all. I want to be fulfilled and to know that I lived my life to the best of my ability. I wan to be pleased with who I am, what I did, and what I did for others. I want to be a whole person who embraces the plot twists of life. This is my story. This is my truth. This is my narrative. "Narrative identity takes part in the story's movement, in the dialectic between order and disorder." Paul Ricoeur Words cannot describe how amazed I am that this blog, this written representation of who I am as a person in my ...

Truth - The Internet is at the exact same time both the best and the worst thing to happen to humanity. What a wonderful thing it is to be instantly connected to not only those that matter to you most but others all around the world with the touch of button, a few keystrokes, or a few swipes. Now many than ever it has become increasingly simpler to do truly marvelous things with the internet, the world wide web, and the technology surrounding them. With those advancements though have been the same problems, but also brand new ones darker than we ever could have imagined. All it takes to make or break people and their spirits these days is a quick type, text, and tap away. Anonymous we go.   "One of the most powerful lessons in life is to recognize that no one can give you power, and many people don’t want you to have it. You have to find the courage to seize it, own it and hold on" Shannon L. Alder Never read the comments. I've heard it over and over again, and yet...