love and happiness

2 things i've been thinking about alot recently.


this year i'm reading through Gretchin Rubin's "the happiness project"
and one thing she advises is

act the way you want to feel

which is SO true.

isn't that just the soul of optimism? it takes so much hope and optimism to think "i know i'll get to feeling and being that way soon, so i might as well start acting that way now"... really the most pessimistic way you can act is like now is all that matters, that your annoyances and trials at this moment are everything to everyone.

i am an optimist, i have learned... but what percentage of the things i say every day are negative? i think at some point i figured out that if i said all the things i wanted to say, people called me naive and a bit silly, so somewhere along the way i stopped saying the happy things i think. this must stop, it's just silly... and i think it ties right into that advice.


act the way you want to feel
speak the way you want to feel


i'm going to start telling people what it is i love about them. because that is a good thing to do. i'm always telling other people how much i like a person and what i like about them , but i very seldomly tell that person.

here goes for a start...

I LIKE YOU!

but i did not do a crime of making a graffiti, copper!

Tomorrow is my birthday!!

Emily came up for the weekend, and today, after eating horrifically large servings of pancakes at the Original Pancake House (yummm), we got cans of spray paint and man-shirts and made a graffiti! We used a sheet of plywood... does that still count as graffiti if it's legal? Not sure.

Be ye not decieved by our faces... it was so cold! 35-40ish and windy. We had 3 pairs of socks on each and the biggest pot of tea you ever saw.

Emily accidentally spray painted my hands red. It looked weird. What was weirder, though, was later when I almost used steel wool to get it off. Dumbo.

We love how it turned out! It will hold a proud place on the walls of my future-home.

Tonight the sister spud is coming over and we're going to remodel shoes a la the chick from PS. I Love You, and watch The Blob. Scaaary! Or... maybe not so scary.

someday will be me

Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks. Perhaps this person will never be disappointed or disillusioned; perhaps she won't suffer the way people do when they have a dream to follow. But when the person looks back--she will hear her heart.
Paulo Coelho

--

i have a list.

a list of things i will do... someday. and they are brave things, wild things, things to happen when the wind blows. i know these things are in me... just not here yet.

i want to jump into the ocean with all my clothes and shoes on, and lie in the waves until i feel the rhythm of the tide is part of me. i want to ride a train to someplace with cobblestone streets and mist... i want to ride a bicycle with no hands, and do somersaults by a lake.

this is not the whole list. it goes on and on. and these things will happen.

-photo via sabino

stop this train

No, I'm not colorblind

I know the world is black and white

Try to keep an open mind

But I just can't sleep on this tonight

Stop this train

I wanna get off

And go home again

I can't take the speed it's moving in

I know I can't

But honestly, won't someone stop this train?

Don't know how else to say it

Don't want to see my parents go

One generation's length away

From fighting life out on my own

Stop this train

I wanna get off

And go home again

I can't take the speed it's moving in

I know I can't

But honestly, won't someone stop this train?

So scared of getting older

I'm only good at being young

So I play the numbers game

To find a way to say that life has just begun

Had a talk with my old man

Said "help me understand"

He said "turn sixty-eight

You renegotiate"

"Don't stop this train

Don't for a minute change the place you're in

And don't think I couldn't ever understand

I tried my hand

John, honestly we'll never stop this train"

Once in awhile, when it's good

It'll feel like it should

And they're all still around

And you're still safe and sound

And you don't miss a thing

Till you cry when you're driving away in the dark

Singing

Stop this train

I wanna get off

And go home again

I can't take the speed it's moving in

I know I can

Cause now I see I'll never stop this train

- John Mayer

scared of a colour?

i read an essay on aliveness (the author had much more poetic terms for it) recently, and the lady who wrote it said that one of her goals was to do one thing that scared her every day.

this does not mean go handle cobras, walk along the edge of a skyscraper rooftop, or play with knives.

it means to face those ridiculous fears that plague you. you know which ones. the fear of singing in public, of starting a project, of talking too loud or too much, of sharing your life, of a certain colour. these are not you.

so i have a mission.

today i am embracing the colour orange. up until now i have feared this colour. it is too bright, too bold, too reminiscent of traffic cones. but this morning i realised that the things i fear about it are things that i actually love. yet somehow that fear has remained.

why do we cling to these fears as though they are a part of us?

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear;

but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

.

we can't say that it is in our nature to fear - perhaps in our unredeemed nature, but we have been redeemed. It Is Finished. so when we fear, we are ignoring God's gift. remember here?when we fear, just like when we cease to rejoice, it is as though someone has given us a washing machine as a gift, because they want us to have a better life, and yet we continue to wash our clothes by hand. God first gave us life. and after we messed up, he gave us more life.

so now that we are saved, now that not only our souls but also our lives, the very world we live in is covered all over by His redemption -

do we have any reason to fear?

and closer to the point...

do we have any right to fear?

this embracing life, this casting off of fear - at first glance it does seem humanistic... or even hedonistic. but i believe it to be the opposite. think about it. humanism comes from the idea that man is central. that mankind stands in the center and the entire universe literally revolves around him. God is not in this equation. our lives are our own, and nobody else's.

but our lives are not our own. our lives are God's. they are a piece of his creation, and what is our purpose here but to praise him and to guard his creation against sin? allowing fear into your life is allowing the effects of sin to alter you.

so this is why i am embracing orange today. i may not be able to refute all unbiblical doctrines, i may never save a life, but i can do this. i can fight human nature in this small way.

beloved fool

I must learn to love the fool in me -- the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbour and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my fool.

--T.I.Rubin