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...

Truth - Each and every person has something they are particular gifted with. The greatest disappointment in life is not being able to discover what you're talented with and/or using it to the fullest of its potential. While some people are task oriented and can get things done others are cartographers, charting the path that gets those task runners where they need the be. Oftentimes those qualities are mutually-exclusive but what happens when those people collaborate or someone comes along who has been infused with both sides of a false dichotomy ... simple, foresight turns into dynamic action. You can argue you are able to do without having a plan, but having a plan and not doing anything with it comes to the same result. Both are necessary to see something through to completion. This is vision. " Visionary people face the same problems everyone else faces; but rather than get paralyzed by their problems, visionaries immediately commit themselves to finding a solution....

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...

Truth - Life happens in bit and pieces. Each day we write a little bit more of our life stories. The people we meet become different characters in our escapades. Our conversations, actions, and experiences write the narrative that fill the pages. Little by little we complete sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and books. The only thing that remains constant is us as the protagonist but even we, ourselves, change along the way. That's part of our character development. This is chronicle. " To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization." Harriet Beecher Stowe For the majority of my time in this life, it's been written in semester increments. Just as one ends, another creeps up and is ready to begin. This year saw me having my big finish to my college chapter and starting a new one with graduate school. The cycle was set to continue but this time the stak...

The 20s are all about being there for one another. One thing I know I do not do enough is spend time with those I care most about. If there was one thing I could change about my time in college it would be how much time I spent worrying about tests, lab reports, and essays. I would have rather used that time to connect even more so with the people who were around me. There will never be a time like this again. College really is a special place in so many ways. What I have learned most about college is that is where many people, including myself, truly learn what it means to take care.   Taking care, at least to me, comes in two ways that naturally seem to overlap. Personal care is oh so very important. It's the ways in which we take time to make sure that we, ourselves, are doing more than okay but doing well and being well. It's when we indulge in our favorite things. For me that shows up in writing this blog, cooking food, getting drawn in  to a TV show or movie, l...

The 20s exploring your own self perception. Oftentimes the ways in which we see ourselves are drastically different than the ways that others see us. When you ask your friends, family, and coworkers to describe you usually they say something different than what you would say about yourself. That dichotomy can sometimes be jarringly stark. There seems to be clearly defined differences between how we show up and how we think we show up. Maybe it's worthwhile to reconcile the two? Time to get your match on; this is swipe right. There is nothing to me like spending time in an airport. Regardless of the all the horribly boring experiences of waiting for delayed flights, missing crew members, and cranky patrons, there is just something about them that I find eye-opening to reflect upon every time I am in one. They are hubs were I come into close contact with vastly different people. The diversity of them is always a welcome change of pace particularly from the bubble of my campus cu...