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Existential Crisis Maybe?

I want to be able to describe exactly what I'm experiencing, but the only way I can think to explain it is that it's the exact opposite of experiencing anything at all. It's been many months now since I felt fully present in my body and aware of my surroundings. My mind is in a fog. I don't sleep. I don't remember things as well as I used to. I can't focus on anything. I constantly feel like I'm in a hurry and in a rush to get to the next thing. I don't cry anymore, which is the biggest change. I used to cry regularly in moments of joy and sadness. Now I don't feel anything at all.I feel stress and anxiety and I feel like I'm in a hurry. Other than that, I don't experience love, joy, sadness, anger, humor, hurt, etc. Everything rolls off of me, but not in a Zen way... just in a numb way. For awhile I told myself to let it be. I decided I was just over-stimulated with change and a heavy year of emotions and that maybe my heart was just tuning out for awhile. But I have been feeling like this since early May, and I'm worried that my brain has been more permanently rewired than I originally thought. I don't feel like myself. That person who was full and feeling and aware and reflective and brimming with life and energy... I don't know where that person is. It is affecting my teaching, as I find myself with less patience, energy, and positivity. A year ago at this time my relationship was ending, my panic due to my new job was in full swing, and my sense of security had crumbled... however, I still FELT all of that. I felt it all very deeply. Now, one year later, I have change in my home and my career and my heart... but I am not emotionally engaged in any of it. What is all of this? How can I change it? Why is it that being aware of what I'm experiencing doesn't help me to change it? What's wrong with me? Why can't I just be happy and full like I know I can be? I want that, and I know I can be that because I've been that before... but I don't know how it happens.

allejandromedina

73/365 8 Balloons. By Alejandro Gonzalez This is one too many photos of balloons, train tracks, and fog. I’ll switch it up soon. It looks like I’m going to be car-less for a while, which I wouldn’t mind if I lived somewhere that had cool places to shoot, but I don’t so I’m very upset.

This time I'm committed to learning meditation. This year I'm going to learn stillness. Starting today I want the word "solitude" to invoke feelings of peace instead of feelings of fear. I will no longer listen to music that matches my depressed mood, and will instead use music as a tool to lift me out dark places. My words will not give power to complaint and frustration, but will instead encourage joy and appreciation. I am more in control than I have been able to admit to myself. It is much easier to become a chameleon and blend in with the numbness and boredom all around, than to work (hard!) to find the beauty in everything and everyone in your day-to-day routine.

Fear has been my companion in solitude. Fear has been my bed-mate in times when love should have been the only thing present. Fear never supports me or helps me out, and it is time to stop welcoming it into my life like an old friend just for the sake of familiarity. There's enough fear in the world without giving it a place to live in my heart.

Love was made for me and you

"I feel like we aren't as comfortable with these words as we all grow older, but I love you."

I found myself saying these exact words to one of my dearest friends yesterday. We were waxing poetic, looking ahead at the future and reminiscing about years long since past; thinking about all of the things we have shared and hope to still do together in the future. This particular person has been in my life and in my heart since I was twelve years old, and I cherish our relationship. This is why it felt so unfamiliar yesterday when I decided towards the end of our conversation that I wanted to tell him how I loved him, and my social priming/Mother Culture was telling me NOT to. Culture was telling me that as we have grown up and entered adulthood, those words are not to be used so liberally. This friend of mine has a partner in his life, and Culture said that perhaps it would be inappropriate to share that kind of verbal intimacy with him. This friend and I have our own history of love and physical affection, and Culture was telling me that the words "I love you" could somehow be misread or misinterpreted or unappreciated considering our past.

When did these words become so complicated? When we were younger, "I love you"s flowed between us on a daily basis. Love was easy. Love was simple. And this doesn't refer just to this one relationship, but to all of the people that I verbally shared my love with on a regular basis. Where can I find people who will just openly love, without reservation or fear or looking for meaning in it? Love IS meaning. It's the reason I get up in the morning. Why is it that as I've grown older these words carry so much complication? Why is it that these words are supposed to be reserved for specific relationships and specific moments? There are so many people that I love dearly, but only a fraction of them get to hear it. Maybe they are married. Maybe they don't know how to say, "I love you, too". Maybe we have a history that complicates such a simple phrase. Whatever the reason... I hate the reason. And I hate the reason because it is a stupid reason not to tell someone that they touch your heart and touch your life. It is stupid to let fear keep love at bay. It is stupid to complicate such a simple emotion with the complexities of relationships and the baggage of social structures.

I just want to love. I wake up in the morning because my alarm goes off, but I get up in the morning so that I might experience the fulfillment of love during the day. In my youth, I got up and started my day knowing that love would be woven into every experience I had. Now, in my emerging adulthood, I get up and start my day merely hoping. Why should it change? Why should it be different now? Do adults love less than children and teenagers? I don't think so. At least, not because they don't want to. But I do think adults have more fear than children and teenagers, and love cannot exist where fear has embedded itself. I'm not the only one who thinks so.

“Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.” ― Marianne Williamson

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.”― John Lennon

"But saying o'er what I have said before"

I always write my title last, if I choose to write one at all. This goes for all of my writing; poems, books, short stories, blogs. I usually don't know what I'm going to write about when my fingertips start playing across the keys. Sometimes I feel like I'm reading someone else's writing as the words begin to materialize on the screen... I'm not usually conscious of what I'm about to write.

A few nights ago I was having a heart-to-heart with a new friend when she said, "I find that I can't have deep and meaningful connection with someone who has not experienced great suffering or pain in their life." I cocked my head and furrowed my brow, much as a puppy does when he sees something new that he is trying to understand. Experiencing connection through the sharing of pain and/or suffering is something I am very much familiar with (aren't we all?), but I don't know that I had put this phenomenon into words before. I think it was the first time the irony struck me, that we all spend so much emotional and intellectual energy trying to protect ourselves from pain while meanwhile we are simultaneously seeking connection, when it seems true that you can't have the latter without the former. I think it makes pain a rather beautiful thing... the glue that bonds every human on earth. There will always be more that unites us than divides us; we will always have more in common than we will have differences. Pain is one of them. That's a beautiful thing.

Pain has been the theme of my life this year. Maybe I can move forward with the healing process (is there really such a thing as healing?) more easily knowing that it has primed me for greater depth and connection in my relationships with other people. I know I'm in a stage of grief right now, and I can still hear the voice in my head trying to invalidate that grief. The voice says that I am too privileged to be experiencing grief. It tells me that the things that make my heart heavy are not valid in the grand scheme of human suffering. But I try to combat it with a new voice that says those feelings of grief will be there, whether I judge them or not. It's easier to let them be and give my grief space to process the many losses I have experienced over this last year. Numbness. Restlessness. Fatigue. Apathy. Lack of interest. Forgetfulness. Slowed thinking. Hyperactivity. They are all effects of grief, and I have only to wait them out. What more can I do?

But you can't have the dark without having the light. Joy. Elation. Nirvana. Ecstasy. These are things that make connections run deep, too. To share laughter with someone until your body aches, that is true poetry. To share the sudden urge to run, for no apparent reason, that is living. To dance in the car with the windows down and the heat up, singing at the top of your lungs in harmony with a friend... there's nothing else like it. I know we all have bills to pay and work to do, but having people in your life with whom you can laugh is enough to get you through any monotonous task.

I think I'm learning that I need people in my life who can share in both of these extremes with me, because that is where the life is lived. I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again; I loved working with Kindergartners this year simply because they cried when they were sad and they laughed when they were happy. Let me say it yet again; They cried when they were sad and they laughed when they were happy. If every adult knew how to do this, we would have a much easier time finding that one thing we are all searching for- connection. It takes the expression of pain for people to know that you need a hug. It takes the expression of joy for people to know to laugh and sing with you. When do we unlearn expression? It's a sad thing that as we grow we learn to save expression for private moments to ourselves or with our therapists...

"We look at each other wondering what the other is thinking. But we never say a thing... and these crimes between us grow deeper." - Ants Marching

Nothing much to say.

Sometimes I just enjoy feeling the ink move from my pen to the page. It's like spinning a web, or weaving a thread through cloth. It connects one thing to another in a tangible way. The way my wrist bends and the feel of my hand moving along the paper grounds me, even when there is nothing much to say.

When will this fog lift? When will life return to vivid focus again? I repeat the same questions simply hoping the answers will change, much as a child asks, "Are we there yet?" in the hopes that the question itself will sooner bring about the destination. I know there is no growth in a destination, but there is release and satisfaction... two things I wouldn't mind having more of in my life. There are aches and pains associated with growing, and the same shoes never seem to fit for very long before you need the next size up. I just want to settle into myself long enough to break in a single pair of figurative shoes.

And the second one...

When was the last time you visited your elementary school? Do you remember the first name of your third grade teacher? What about the smell of your kindergarten classroom? Can you recall the unique sound of the recess bell? Do you know where you lost your first tooth?

Neither did I.

That is, until I got my first teaching job at my old elementary school. The flood of memories that I experienced when stepping back on the campus could rival the failed levees of New Orleans. Now I’m on a first-name basis with my third grade teacher, as she is my colleague. What was once my kindergarten classroom is now the staff room, and thus I eat finger food every day in the same space I used to finger-paint. The recess bell goes off four times a day, making my ears perk up at the familiar echo from my childhood. The staff bathroom that I use is the same tiny, one-room, windowless closet where I lost my first tooth. Every time I pee I’m thinking about the kindergarten version of myself, standing on my tippy toes to stare into the mirror at the bloody hole in my mouth.

Every face is the same. Every smell is the same. The bricks feel the same as a run my fingers across them when I walk to the office. And when it rains, I sidestep the same puddles in the courtyard.

This wasn’t what I wanted. If you had lined up every teaching job in the state, this is the last place I would have expected to be hired. There was precious little that I knew about teaching elementary school music. I remembered playing recorders and singing a few halloween songs… but none of those memories seemed very helpful. They hired me a week before school started, and I spent every minute of that week in a blind panic. Mostly I was terrified of the kindergartners. I was remembering Arnold Schwarzenegger in the early scenes of Kindergarten Cop and imagining I wouldn’t fare much better.

I am now four months into the job and I’m no longer terrified. Do I know what I’m doing? No. Are kindergartners scary? Absolutely. But I learn so much from them every day that it’s worth putting on a HazMat suit of armor just to hear the absolutely wonderful things that come out of their germy mouths. They have such wonderfully imaginative and creative perspectives of the world, that I feel compelled to share them.

Hence this blog.

I find myself in the strange position of trying to start my adult life in the same environment where I spent my childhood. It makes me particularly reflective/introspective about how I live my life now, compared to how I lived my life then. So, once a week I am going to pose a question to myself- answer it- and then ask the same question of my kindergarten class. I will share the answers from both sources and see what kind of contrast and inspiration we can find.

I hope you enjoy their words as much as I do.

Blow the dust off of these....

In January I started a teaching blog, but I only wrote two entries before I started this one. In the hopes of not losing track of my two original entries, I'm posting them here. Enjoy.

_____________________________________________

RESOLUTIONS

Seeing as it’s the New Year, I thought I would start this blogging journey by picking the brains of my kindergartners to see what they knew of resolutions, and find out if they had any. Just as I expected, their answers were illuminating.

Question: What are your resolutions for the New Year?

Evan- “I’m going to listen to my mom.”

Joshua- “I’m going to wrestle with my brother more.”

Amelia- “I have a birthday resolution. That means I’m going to eat eight bowls of ice cream on my birthday… and each bowl is going to have two scoops!”

Emily- “I’m going to eat more cookies.”

Question: What is a resolution?

Kayla- “A resolution is when you decide to do more of the things that make you happy.”

………

………………

……………………..

Ohhhhh, is THAT what a resolution is?! Then why do my resolutions look like this…

Lose ten pounds

Drink more water

Have better posture

Spend less money

Start a blog (check)

Become conversational in German

Of these six resolutions, I would say only two of them fall under the category of “things that make me happy.” I love studying German, and I love writing. The other four just exist under the category of “self-improvement”. That’s the beauty of kindergartners; they don’t know they need self-improvement. Can you even imagine the freedom that comes with that kind of perspective? And yes, to improve oneself is an admirable goal and not one that I mean to diminish, but I think my list could be better balanced with doing more things that make me happy. So I’ve edited it.

Lose ten pounds- but never refuse a cupcake.

Drink more water- and drink more wine, too.

Have better posture- and use it while learning the piano

Spend less money- but always say “Yes” to a fun experience, regardless of cost

Start a blog (check)

Become conversational in German

Watch more movies (I’ve always felt guilty about time spent in front of a TV, but I enjoy movies! Thank you, Kayla, for inspiring me to add it to the list)

The question I pose to you- Do your resolutions include doing more of the things that make you happy?

___________________________________________

Not Now

I can't feel anything anymore. The calendar is full. Appointments. Meetings. Errands. The calendar is full. Then when I least expect it I feel emotion rising up, forcing its way out. Caution, contents under pressure. It's like bitter bile in my throat and I swallow hard to force it back down.

Not now.

There's no time.

The calendar is full.

When the sun goes down I try to feel when it is most convenient to feel. But in the dark my mind wanders and I can't focus. The dark is maddeningly quiet. I can't cry or laugh or scream. Distract me. Make me feel. Something. Anything. Kiss me hard. Pull my hair. Harder. I am doing this so I can feel. Sink in your nails, sink in your teeth. Fuck me.

Harder.

I am doing this so I can feel.

I drive home with glassy eyes. Unseeing eyes. Unfeeling eyes. I remember when my body was a vehicle of emotion, not so long ago. Every moment was saturated with experience, be it pleasant or not. But I flew too close to the sun. The heat became too intense. My wings melted. By the time I reached the ground I had already forgotten what it was to fly. I feel emotion rising up, forcing its way out. Caution, contents under pressure. It's like bitter bile in my throat and I swallow hard to force it back down.

Not now.

There's no time.

The calendar is full.

I love this idea- I needed to share it, so I wrote out a few paragraphs of the book I'm reading.

"Green burial advocates have cast the issue almost entirely in terms of avoiding the staggering environmental impact of traditional burial. Consider that before this year is over, Americans will bury 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid, 90,272 tons of steel (caskets), 2,700 tons of copper and bronze, 1,636,000 tons of reinforced concrete, and more than 30 million board feet of hardwoods. Cremation isn't much of an improvement over such things. Going up in smoke may use fewer natural resources than traditional burial, but it also consumes a significant amount of fossil fuels.

Environmental concerns alone make green burial an obvious solution. But as a psychologist, and one who' also had negative experience with burying a loved one in the traditional manner, I think our conception of death and burial needs a serious rethink. Let's close the lid on those anonymous, revenue-driven, laminated cultural practices of commercial burial that we've all become so complacent about. There's got to be a better way to go about it than what we've been doing all these years. And one specific form of green burial, which I'll outline in a moment, is a win-win.

It seems to me that one way to solve this problem while remaining true to the central philosophy of green burial is to have people buried beneath a specific tree- a little sapling of your choice nourished by your decomposing body beneath. Imagine that on making final arrangements at the funeral home someday, you and your loved ones were able to choose from among a wide variety of co-habitable tree species to find just the right tree to suit your fabulously unforgettable being- this instead of flipping through a catalog filled with caskets, coffins, and crypts as my mother found herself doing. Not only will your death nourish a new life, but you're also saving another tree, the one that would be sacrificed for your sake in the shape of a mass-produced coffin with plastic handles.

Now picture an entirely brand new cemetery, a planned, verdant, protected land tended by trained arborists and filled not with row after row of bland, lifeless, crumbling headstones but instead with row after row of living trees. Each tree, selected for regional appropriateness and other suitability factors as advised by arborist staff, would symbolize a unique human existence. (Not to get carried away, but perhaps a plaque or marker might be added too, enhancing the symbolic immortality element, but aesthetics of course would vary.) These aren't simply trees planted in memoriam of the dead but leafy hybrids whose veins have absorbed individual human lives.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that even if one doesn't believe in some ethereal or religious version of the afterlife, it's rather difficult to escape the cognitive illusion that the unobservable essence of each person has somehow gradually transmuted into his or her individual tree. Two massive walnut trees growing side by side with interlocking branches seem somehow more than mere trees when we learn that they're actually growing upon what was once a husband and wife who lived centuries before. There's no shortage of idyllic essentialist images like this- grandchildren climbing up their great-grandfather's limbs, children who'd been sickly in life now bursting with the blazing colors of autumn, beauty queens forever fragrant with immaculate cherry blossoms, stillborn infants now magnificent oaks. It would take some time, of course, for this human arboretum to fully mature. But what's the rush?"

-Jesse Bering, Why is the Penis Shaped Like That... and other reflections on being human

Fool's Gold (2008)

What a welcome distraction,

the memory of a soft caress in my mind

when for a fraction

of a second eyes meet,

our thoughts intertwined

the way arms and legs could be

if the world were blind and

couldn't see

or hear the laughter under covers

made by the most foolish

of all lovers.

And if this is simply fool's gold

I ask for nothing more.

I have been warned,

I have been told.

I can ride my life with no training wheels

Do you remember that sensation when you first realized you were riding a bike all by yourself without training wheels? You had spent the entire afternoon falling over and over again. Your bloodied elbows and knees were a testament to how hard you were trying. It was the same repeated routine; Dad held you up, you started pedaling, he let go, and you fell.

But then there was that awesome moment. You were focused so hard on what you were doing that you didn't hear your dad cheering behind you. You dared to peek back just long enough to find that you had ridden the last 50 feet all by yourself. No training wheels. No one holding you up. Now you knew what it felt like to ride. The sensation was suddenly familiar and you knew you would never have to go back to being physically supported again.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm looking back at the last two weeks and realizing... I did it! I mean, I'm doing it. No one is holding me up anymore, and I'm flourishing. And now that I know what this momentum feels like, I don't need my emotional training wheels anymore. Welcome back, 2.0!

Yes, I'm crazy. My mind really does sound like this.

Light: How are you doing?

Dark: Horrible. The weekend is over and we have so much to do this week.

Light: So what exactly is the problem?

Dark: Did you not hear? We have SO much to do.

Light: Would you prefer the alternative?

Dark: What alternative?

Light: Not having anything to do?

Dark: Well, no, not exactly.

Light: So what's the problem then?

Dark: Well these are just a bunch of things that I feel like we have to do. There's a big difference between doing things you want to do and doing things you have to do.

Light: Ok, so what are these things that we have to do?

Dark: Well, we have to teach all week, and that is always exhausting.

Light: Hm, sounds invigorating to me! But what would you choose to do if we weren't teaching?

Dark: I don't know. Sleep in. Write. Go to a coffee house. Ponder our existence.

Light: Now THAT sounds exhausting. What will we have to write about if we are always sitting in coffee houses writing?

Dark: I hadn't thought of that.

Light: MmHm. I didn't think so.

Dark: Well, anyways, there are a lot of things we have to do besides teach.

Light: You keep using those words, "have to". I don't quite understand what you're referring to.

Dark: Well, we have to go to rehearsal tomorrow. We have to attend the honor concert on Tuesday night. We have therapy on Wednesday. On Thursday we need to drive four hours down to Portland to attend the conference for the following two days.

Light: Those all sound like things we chose to do.

Dark: Well, I guess they are, but in the moment it doesn't always feel like a choice. I just want to sit for a minute.

Light: No you don't. You hate sitting. You hate doing nothing more than you hate doing everything.

Dark: That's true.

Light: So, won't it be easier if you just accept that everything we are doing this week is something we signed up for, and that all of it is better than none of it?

Dark: But this isn't the life we wanted to live. We wanted to be great. We wanted to be talented. We wanted to change lives and have an impact on the world. We wanted to have something worth saying. We aren't doing any of that.

Light: Whoa! Hold on! We wanted to be great? We wanted to be talented? Changing lives... impacting the world? Remind me again, how long has it been since we graduated from college?

Dark: Ummm, about eight months.

Light: And what exactly did you expect us to accomplish in such a short amount of time?

Dark: I don't know. Something.

Light: Well, just because we haven't become talented or changed lives in eight months doesn't mean we aren't headed there. We are learning a LOT. Even you have to admit that. And all of it is helpful in reaching our goals. Plus, once we reach those goals, we will need new ones anyways. So you might as well be content in constant growth, even though some of it is really hard, even for me.

Dark: Content? I hate the word, as I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee.

Light: Cute. Shakespeare references always butter me up- you know my weakness.

Dark: Everything butters you up. It's annoying.

Light: Well, it's just easier that way. Not every moment will be filled with beauty and laughter. That's life. Think about all of the cumulative minutes we spend filling up our gas tank over the course of a year. Now, when you fill up the gas tank you zone out and let the time pass because you want it to be over so you can move onto the next thing. When I fill up the gas tank I make a point to smile at people, maybe I even start a conversation. Sometimes I leave the window open so I can continue to sing along to the song on the radio. It's not the most inspiring environment, but like I said, life is full of uninspiring things. Find a way to be content with that.

Dark: Or I can do it my way, and brood.

Light: Yeah, that's an option. And sometimes you win, and we brood, and I accept that, too. We are both going to share this mind forever, so I understand that sometimes you will call the shots. But you have to admit, when I am the one filling the gas tank, we have a good time.

Dark: Ok, sure. For that one thing.

Light: That one thing? You think that's the only uninspiring environment that I manage to fill with purpose?

Dark: Well, what others are there?

Light: Waiting for the toaster to pop or the kettle to boil, waiting for traffic lights, waiting at the doctor's office... really any kind of waiting. Buying groceries, long drives, staff meetings, running errands, practicing clarinet, paying bills, sitting on a long flight...

Dark: Ok, I get it. There are a lot of uninspiring things in life. But that's why I get frustrated.

Light: "If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, admit to yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches."

Dark: Ugh, I should have known you would go quoting Letters to a Young Poet. Don't you dare believe for one moment that we can all be inspired all of the time. Sometimes it just won't happen. I'm stubborn, as you know, and I won't let it happen.

Light: I know. And I'm at peace with that. I can't sleep with one eye open, after all, and sometimes you get carried away when I'm not watching. You have every right to be here, too. I just prefer it when I'm in charge of our thoughts.

Dark: You know what, so do I.

Fish were meant to swim. Birds were meant to fly. We were meant to ask the question, "Who the fuck am I?""

"a concentrated snapshot of the vast spectrum of human emotion"

I find myself in an environment rich with inspiration, and it's an unlikely environment indeed. It's not a quaint coffee house, a smoke-filled pub, or a scenic hillside- but inspiration finds us in odd places. I'm currently sitting on the floor of a hotel ballroom at my little sister's dance competition. Glitter, loud music, hairspray, spotlights, crazy mothers, a panel of judges... it's everything you would imagine a dance competition to be. Like I said, an unlikely place to take a seat and write down my thoughts, but alas, here I am.

When you look past the glitter and the vanity you will find a rich collection of stories. There have been dozens and dozens of performances so far, and collectively they capture every extreme of the human experience. Some depict beauty, while others are meant to be grotesque. They tell stories of birth as well as the final chapter (or new beginning) of death. The prediction of the future as well as the nostalgia of the past. Falling in love as well as being broken hearted. The soft and the light are followed moments later with the hard and the heavy. Femininity is contrasted with masculinity. Extreme sexuality is portrayed against the backdrop of the pious and pure...

Seeing such a concentrated snapshot of the vast spectrum of human emotion and experience is overwhelming. Only now am I fully understanding that we all live on a multitude of sliding scales, each representing opposing extremes and the space between them. I've been so focused on eradicating darkness from my thoughts and my life that I failed to see the truth, which is that both light and dark exist within me all of the time, but my place on the spectrum will always be in constant flux. To expect to experience light 100% of the time is to deny the yin to the yang. I mean, we only know that day is light because we know that night is dark... and similarly I only know what light feels like because I know what dark feels like. And there is so much more than just light and dark; those words are so broad. To give you an accurate description of myself at any given moment would have to entail so many spectrums of emotion. For example, right now, in this moment, I feel like this...

...just to name a few. We are such wonderfully complex creatures, and each of us has a hundred of these little scales going on within us at any given moment, and they are constantly changing. Unfortunately, we don't get to push and pull them around as we please. It is our experiences that are shaping us and molding us, and we don't always get to control our experiences.

It puts power back in my hands to know that, when I'm in the dark, it is only a matter of time and experience that will slide me back into the light. Perhaps knowing that will help me to be in the light more often.

Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on Earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.

Marianne Williamson

"All you need is faith, trust, and a little bit of pixie dust."

I'm ready to fly!

I just can't remember where I keep my pixie dust...

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