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 ...

"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...

“Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.”Fred Rogers You know who is awe-inspiringly human ... kids . Children are the most remarkable embodiment of what humanity can be. What would our world look like if we sought to emulate the humanity of children? We have our humanity tamed as we grow older. Children are carefree, fearless, and zany. They show affectionate readily, communicate candidly, and ask questions. Their curiosity for the world around them is their greatest asset. Kids are weird. They do things without reason but also have this profound worldview that is less clouded by socialization. They don't hold back for better or worse. They cry, express joy, laugh a whole lot, and feel their feelings. They can be so human it hurts.  We ...

"Space travel is life-enhancing, and anything that's life-enhancing is worth doing. It makes you want to live forever." Ray Bradbury Space - the final frontier. Positing life as a representation of space and all its wonders has come to be a useful metaphor for understanding the world. We are all the center of our own universes, or at least we're supposed to be. Sometimes we aren't. What happens when others in our experiences are centered in our lives or we don't perceive ourselves to be in the middle of our existences? My therapist called it a sort of a blackhole effect where the position that we should be finding ourselves in is instead occupied by a force that seems nearly impossible to overcome. Usually it has to do with children and not being fully positioned in the center of their lives growing up that forces them to take care of themselves sooner than usual, essentially becoming a full-grown star early. It's gravitational pull drawing absolute...

" The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been." Madeleine L'Engle Another year has come and gone , still I am here in this life. What a journey year 25 was. Birthdays serve as a milestone in our narrative. They are a pause to let us a take a beat, take account of all that has occurred, and reflect on who we've been + who we still want to be. We don't spend enough time taking in what we've experienced, feeling it, and mediating on it. There's something to be said about taking stock of what we've been through, the choices we've made, and our impact on the people/world around us. What does it mean to be us? Why do we matter? How are we significant? Pondering those existential crisis may be feel overwhelming at moments, but when we are able to clarify who we are, and articulate our meaning then answering those proposed questions becomes an exercise in identification rather than deciphering. Wh...

“Consistent positive self-talk is unquestionably one of the greatest gifts to one's subconscious mind.”  Edmond Mbiaka Something amazing has happened . Something about me has changed. Something significant has occurred. The most striking part is that it's slowly happened over time, and I am just now realizing that it has. I am calm. For the first time in my life my normal state is chill. I have spent my life, so long as I can remember, nervous, slightly anxious, and constantly worried about other people; what they thought of me, how I was showing up, and their experience of me. My regular state was always slightly below a panic, heart racing, sweaty armpits, body tense. My inner dialogue was the other me telling me that I was being weird, asking why I was so awkward, questioning if I deserved to be where I was, concerned if someone would figure me out, and afraid that I was not safe. Perpetual fear is not a way to live. My moments of peace were few, and far between. A...

" You have to figure out how you can step forward and affect your own life. I think that sense of empowerment is actually really positive, specifically for the young generation because they've been bystanders in their own lives for a while." Jennifer Yuh Nelson The bystander effect is the social phenomenon that people are less likely to intervene when other people are around because they assume someone else will intervene, ergo no one intercedes. Oftentimes it's applied to proximate social settings but I believe it applies to a wider swath of social interaction a la social media, among other things. How many times do we see someone we're connected to post or share something odd, strange, alarming, heartbreaking, or even joyous, and think so many other people are witnessing this. Someone else will reach out, someone who knows them better will do it, or someone who is closer to them will say something. Maybe we feel awkward, embarrassed, or helpless to actuall...

" Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend."  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.  I'm tired. I'm exhausted. I'm spent. I have spent the entirety of my life being "amazing." My modus operandi has long been going above and beyond, being awe-inspiring, doing the most, etc. So long as I can remember I have been performing. Maybe it's a caricature. Maybe it's a program. Maybe it's a life stoked in expectations, real, perceived, projected, and internalized that has run rampant. I have been putting on a show. I have been entertaining. I have been portraying the character that has been expected of me, or rather who I have thought I'm supposed to be. I am a person simultaneously whole and categorically broken. I am a soul betwixt and between worlds warped by social pressures, entrenched in a constant battle to be worthy, emboldened by a yearn to be enough. This strive to prove my brilliance, my value, my...

" A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer's decision to choose one product or service over another."  Seth Godin Every single person we connect with experiences us differently. They engage with our "brand." Like the onslaught of obnoxiously intrusive ads (our phones are definitely entrenched in subliminal espionage) sprawled across social media, we are constantly "marketing" ourselves to others - ideally in less rapacious ways. What happens when we treat ourselves like a personal brand? How does that change the ways that we carry ourselves, who we portray ourselves as, and the story we seek to tell about who and how we are? Branding is about storytelling. Each and every one of us has a story worth sharing/experiencing. If we don't tell our story, we cannot expect others to know, inquire about, or honor it. Knowing our brand means taking stock of what we've ...