Quotable Moments 2014

I really failed at remembering quotes this year, but these 4 moments I did remember to jot down....



1. Joel's financial woes
"I'm saving up to buy a truck, I just don't have money for Yop yogurt right now!" - Joel exasperatingly explains to me

2. Homonyms.....except not..
- LIT girl: "What is a Pre-Siberian" church?
- Me: pardon?
- LIT girl: A "Pre-Siberian" church...at least I think thats how you say it...
- Me: .....
- Me: Oh my gosh, a Presbyterian church?!?! That's excellent.

3. CPR Class with Mom
Me: So the way you landmark is typically in line with the armpits, or for women you can just do compressions between the boobs. For men, children or infants you can also use the nipple line
Mom: Because infants don't have boobs
Me: Yes Mom, thank you.

4. Joel's Recipe for World Peace
"If everyone's day started at 10am and early mornings weren't a thing, there would be world peace. No one would be cranky enough to start a war!"

MCS

"We're the middle children of history, no purpose, no place" - Fight Club

We've got Middle Child Syndrome -- Our whole generation. Our whole Western World in fact. We all whine about finding our purpose, finding our place. We all want attention so badly, we want to be noticed, we try and we try, but we're just not happy. We're lost, we're left out, we're that needy middle child who feels ignored and overlooked and who begs for recognition. We have no "Great War", no "Great Depression", no world-altering, lifestyle-impeding, future-destroying events to contend with on the day to day here in the Great White North or in the Land of the Free. And yet it seems we cannot be without the theatrics and the tragedies, however ironic and fabricated they truly are. Boredom seems to have replaced poverty as the greatest threat to our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. We're bored, and desperately looking for ways to become un-bored.

We are human, and there are these deep stores of passion in us that have to be directed towards some entity. So we passionately pour ourselves into the stupidest things. We become passionate about TV shows, passionate about other people's lives, passionate about anything that can distract us, trick us. We are so void of purpose and so gullible that we spend countless hours marathoning TV shows and hope in the end to feel as though we have accomplished something.

We're the middle children of history. We have had parents and older siblings who have paved the way for us. Handed us this lifestyle on a platter. Done everything they thought would set us on a path success, but are we a generation of success stories? No....we're lazy, and we waste our creative energy. We misplace our passions. We're discouraged from disagreement in the name of tolerance, and so we turn to topics that are safe, topics that don't spark dissension, or change, or inspiration or real passion. All the while we secretly long for those grand struggles so that our stories will point to something significant.

Maybe humanity is meant for heartache and suffering. Maybe that's what brings us to life, brings us purpose and place. Maybe thats why we try to invent our own hardships to give meaning to our lives. We want to see progression in our lives but we don't. We feel like the place holder. We feel like we deserve more...or maybe less. We feel like we're waiting....for our turn.

My Orchestra

Today I sat down with a really great friend and hashed out a reoccurring turmoil I've been having for the last 4 years. I talked, while she graciously listened. Then she talked and I sat a little awed at the wisdom pouring from her lips. And then I sat and listened to the orchestra of my life.

What I heard was very average in an unacceptable way. Average music is completely unworthy of our ears. It was predictable, robotic and uninspired. It wasn't all bad (that's what makes it average). There was some flare and some lively parts, but overall it seemed forced. It was as if the composer's hands had been tied as he was forced to follow a strict set of rules while writing the sheet music, and now both the musicians and the audience were inescapably bored.

As my brilliant friend continued talking I came to see I had forgotten important: That I cannot, with all the schedules and planning and control in all the world, force my orchestra to produce beautiful music. It just doesn't work like that. Joy or even merely happiness cannot be brought into being through brute force or willpower. Love cannot be orchestrated. Inspiration does not materialize under duress. Some of the very best times in my life cannot be traced back to careful planning. In the middle of some of the very best musical movements I would stop and wonder, "How did I get here?" "I didn't write or approve this, but I want more." I want to be surprised and excited by my life.

We are born makers. We were made to create because we have the Spirit of the Creator. But if I am ever to live to create something more than average I need to let the Creator craft me a life worth living....a life in which I am not the conductor or composer or dictator of my orchestra.

My wise friend told me there are moments when you just know you're in the right place at the right time. When you're choosing the right door or saying the right words. And you know because you don't remember how you came to that place, or how the door was opened, and you never rehearsed those words.

Flats and accidentals are all a part of the music, and it would just be too safe to write them out.

make me a bird or a fish, I'm tired of these heavy legs

fly me away where I can't see the ground
where I can't see the people
and can't hear a sound

fly me away in a hot air balloon
promise me love that we'll fly away soon

I already take flight in my dreams every night
sometimes I'm alone in the basket

but don't fret you're not far
and you usually are
adding fire to the air and my thoughts

fly me away dear I'm not scared of heights
just floating and drifting like dust motes in light

fly me away to impossible places
to the sun and the stars and the moon's many faces

its peaceful up here and we won't speak a word
in my hot air balloon i'm as free as a bird

fly me away to a day with no plans
and no maps and no clocks
and no way back again

there's no thinking
no thinking
the thinking is through
I'm so sick of thinking

and I'll never come down
I really must stay
promise me love that you'll fly me away

All You Need is Love

Falling in love repeatedly is a condition which plagues the rich and carefree.

What an arresting thought I first came about in a passage by Oscar Wilde.

"You will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love. A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do."

To think of romance, dating and affairs of the heart as a luxury afforded primarily to the first world. Please do not believe that I am so misguided as to think that the poor, the "have nots", and people of developing nations do not love or fall in love. I'm quite sure they do. Rather I wonder, is it the topic that occupies the majority of their thoughts and conversations? Is the extortion of it one of the most visible elements of their society and culture? With basic human rights in limbo from day to day, would an individual even want all the drama and energy and complications that make up our average Western love story? Our "grandes passions" as Wilde puts it.

Is it selfish to fall in love? I don't think so. Is it sinful to make mistakes and fall in and out of love multiple times? Perhaps not. Is it ignorant to view romantic love as a necessity? Maybe. To be able to daydream about love, to pursue love interests at our leisure, to be able to expend so much of our time and energy on the subject ~ that is our privilege, and perhaps our mistake.

Chocolate Cravings and other Mathematical Dilemmas

There's a formula for overcoming cravings, I'm sure of it. It would include variables such as:
-length of dependence
-proximity to and frequency of encounter to the temptation
-measurement of a person's stubbornness and commitment to crushing the craving

Factor all these variables together and the equation will spit out your best solution for approaching the problem along with a percentage coinciding with your actual chance of success. I'm getting really close to being patent ready with my very scientific and mathematically sound cravings cure.

For example: My chocolate cravings
- length of dependence: ~20-21 years
- proximity to chocolate: we live together
- stubbornness: I could really go either way



= 15% chance of success on the day to day....however the good news is that with every day I beat the odds, the chance of beating the craving the following day increases by 5% up to a maximum of 85%....nobody's perfect.

See how helpful that is/would be!?!

Sometimes you have to really test the craving too...for the sake of science. So once you think you crushed your craving you must test yourself. You should think about it and see whether you have harnessed your mental capacities and employed them in the effort to crush the craving. You might make plans to come into contact with it, and when you do -- will the sight, smell, memories etc make you falter or will you stand firm and celebrate victory?

That's the only way to truly say you've overcome it, to test yourself.

So on to the testing of things bigger and better and more important than chocolate. Let's see if I'm all talk.

Compasses

When we are born, each of us is gifted with a compass. They are all the same, all equal to each other, and they have been since man's beginnings. Each person carries their compass every single day of their lives. When we die, our compass does not become an inheritable heirloom, but rather it is buried with us.

There have been debates as old as the hills as to whether our compass is originally set to point true north, or whether it is set to point the opposite direction, or whether the way the arrow points is arbitrary. Whatever the answer, it seems to be the case that by the time we've put a decade or two between us and our birth, our compasses do not all point in the same direction. Most of us believe we are headed north, with varying degrees of truth to our navigating. However, we can quickly get ourselves spun around after having a head-on collision with someone else northern bound.

Not very many people can actually point in the general direction of north anymore, let alone the elusive true north. We've all been tinkering with our compasses, adjusting the magnetization so that they point where we think north is, where we have been led to believe north is. Sometimes we let our compasses be adjusted by the people who speak and walk so confidently in their knowledge of north. The whole world is walking each point of 360 degrees, and every single degree and the space in between is somebody's north. No wonder we're all crashing into each other. Everybody's lost, and sometimes its the ones that are the most lost that speak the loudest, that point to most persuasively in a certain direction.

By adulthood most people have stuffed their compass in an inner pocket somewhere and only pull it out when they feel they need to justify their chartered course. Of course, what solid proof can their be for one's navigational accuracy without a reliable compass.

If only we had a compass mechanic and an infallible navigator rolled into one. Someone to remind us where true north is. Someone we could have fix our compasses so they point that way consistently. If only the world had someone like that.

Happy Chinese New Year!

And so begins 2014, we leave behind the year of the snake and move into the year of the Transition. The year when I will conclude my formal education and (hopefully) enter the over-populated workforce in search of an nonexistent teaching position. The year when I will leave behind the days of living with an exorbitant amount of roommates and (hopefully) transition to something other than my parent's house. The year when a handful of close friends tie the knot and my plus-one options are rapidly disappearing. My own story is uneventful in that department, but tis the year of the Transition, so (hopefully) there is more to come. This is the year when I actually run out of money in my savings account. Instead of just pretending to be broke poor, I actually will be, and I must figure out how to (hopefully) not allow that fact to interfere with my want and need for all areas of independence.

And since you can always depend on horoscopes: Let's hope the year of the transition is able to bolster this worn out Virgo's many hopes for the future. And if not....at least its an Olympic year.

Everybody Loves a Fairytale Ending

Once upon a time in a far away town,
There lived 7 dwarves in a cottage they found.
They were friendly dwarves and they each had a name.
And though they all were alike, no two were the same.
There was Baby and Messy and Whiny and Lazy,
And Moody and Hungry and the last one was Crazy.
Strange names, you may say, their parents' unkind,
But each earned their names by stubbornness of mind.
Each dwarf trailed refuse behind him or her.
They would all bicker and yell at each other.
Their discord was great, oh they needed a mother.

Well, not too long after Snow White did appear,
To teach them their manners and dry all their tears.
Her task was not easy, often out of her wits,
Snow White often thought she would pack up and quit.
But she believed in those dwarves and the future they had.
And there was nothing about them really that bad.
In time there was progress and Snow White arranged,
For all of the 7 dwarves names to be changed!
Now Lovely and Classy and Smarty and Early,
And Sweepy and Lady and that Crazy turned Girly.
Pleased, Snow White waved goodbye to her friends,
And rode off to find a prince named Charming, The End.

Don't Let Me Be Lonely

"If we don't know how to be alone, we will only know how to be lonely." I was recently caught off guard by this phrase and I wrote it down so I could go back and think about it further. It's memorably worded, and it glimmers of truth. I can see how that may accurately describe a problem facing many in our world. Originally I was going to write this post in praise of the quote and spend time marveling in its wisdom. However I began see two main problems with this philosophy, and that is now my focus.

Firstly, it feeds into our Western ideals of individualism. "Every man for himself", "you can do anything", and the like. We have idolized this idea of making it on your own. Sure you can be well connected, or well married or well-liked, but don't allow those relationships to define you. It should be your individualism that defines you. Dependence on others is regarded as weakness, and I will be the first to admit that I buy into this idea wholeheartedly. But with the West full of individuals struggling to reconcile their friendships, marriages, families and even work relationships with the ever-praised ideal of independence, we have also created another epidemic. The epidemic of loneliness. You can not fully connected to a community and fully independent at the same time.

Perhaps the words of wisdom above speak to the fact that none of these people know how to handle being alone in the correct way and thus are burdened with loneliness? Perhaps. Or perhaps loneliness was a condition that had to first be acknowledged and accepted before a person could truly create aloneness for themselves.

Loneliness, first a passing acquaintance, now a constant companion who will never stand you up.

The second problem I surmise is that there are also those who know only how to be alone. Those who have looked loneliness in the face and refused to be consumed by it, and yet would be liars to call themselves anywhere near immune to it. And these people would sooner say the opposite statement, that it is the inability to be with others that makes them lonely. In other words, "If we do not know how to be in relationship, we will only know how to be lonely." Significantly less poetic, significantly less Western, significantly more basic. I would argue that our relationships do define us. Our love defines us. I cannot believe that our individual traits and talents are meant for our own personal gain. I think it much more likely that I have become a coward in my personalized cave, chosen to have a tea party with loneliness disguised as independence, disguised as strength and maturity disguised as pride.

Therefore I will not disagree with the quote, but simply say that loneliness had seeped its way into the inner circles of our culture, and there's more than one way to gain a deep personal knowledge of it.