Hello 2010 (and age 34....gulp)

Anyone who reads my blog (or the few beloved friends who read my blog), hopefully realizes that I always have the best intentions of writing much and writing often.  It's probably also become crystal clear that my intentions and my abilities are often out of sync.  This is a perfect example....when on 31 Dec I wrote goodbye to 2000, it was my intention to write hello to 2010 the very next morning.  Didn't happen sadly.  My life just doesn't have a script right now. Sometimes other things just get in the way of my love of writing and expression. 

Soul-searching lately has taken up a lot of my time.  I became very ill recently, not the type of unwell feeling you can work through but the kind that knocks you off your feet and actually makes you curl up in bed.  I had a lot of time to think, watch DVDs, and think some more as I willed myself better.

One of many epiphanies I have had as of late is that perhaps the best plan, for me anyway, is to really let life go unscripted.  Sure, have intentions and make them the best possible, but don't hold yourself to expectations, especially unrealistic ones. 

Life isn't perfect and no amount of scripting will ever change that.  But to me that is part of the beauty of it; we never know what is really right around the corner. The unknown of tomorrow could be something negative or it could be the most amazing thing we've experienced yet.

My birthday is a week and a half into the new year.  When 2010 arrived, so did my 34th year of life.  This year I did something different, I did not set any new year's resolutions.  And I think as a birthday gift to myself this year, I will do the same thing. I'm not going to hold myself to anything that I don't know for sure that I can accomplish; maybe let myself off the hook a little.  That way, I won't beat myself up or feel like a total loser if I don't get everything right, all the time.  I've always been someone who sets the bar very high for herself, only to feel like a failure to myself and those around me when I fall short, which is often may I add. 

If I've come to know one thing with age, it's that I am not a super hero, I cannot fix every one's issues (as much as I want to), I cannot make money out of thin air to make someone else happy, I have bad days like everyone else, and I am not perfect and very, very human. 

What I am realizing is that it's taken me 34 years to really learn what my priorities are.  Those priorities are the same as they've always been from a young age really.  The problem is I never thought they were anything special.  And I'm not being trite saying I am anything special now, just someone who is aiming to be content with the life she is living. 

It may not be a dazzling life, this life I've led for more than 3 decades now, but if I can look back on it and feel mostly at peace then it's good enough for me.  Sure, I'd love to say that I could inspire billions around the world like Oprah, but I am happy enough trying to inspire my own children. 

 Being a loving mother/family member, being true to myself, being a real friend to others, letting spiritual rather than worldly things be my guide and at least trying to embrace optimism rather than being pessimistic (even if the rest of the world may laugh at me for being "naive") are the things that matter to me.  These things have been magnetized lately, especially after my grandmother's passing in November.  We can't take money, cars or houses with us when our time here is up.  It's only the love and care we've shared with others that we leave behind.

Now if I could just stop wanting to make everyone else happy with themselves, just as they are.  Maybe next year for my 35th I will give myself the gift of not worrying.  Something tells me that's one thing I will never master. ;-)

"Ancient" Wisdom and Beauty

It's the Sabbath day today and as such, I'm reflecting (of course lately when am I not reflecting?)!  Last night after another long day of feeling like a truck hit me from this cold virus, we decided to just pick up Chinese food for dinner from Shangri-La (not the mythical place of legand and lore, but the restaurant).

Shangri-La is in my old neighborhood.  I drove past my high school on the way to pick it up and I was immediately taken back to my first year of high school at age 16.  I was probably what one would have called a walking contradiction back then. 

As a teenager, most of the time I looked totally opposite as to what I felt inside.  I dressed in black, a lot of it, and wore Doc Marten boots.  If people didn't know me I am certain they thought I was a depressed, suicidal teen.  I wasn't....I just really liked the style and the music that went along with it.  Flash forward to my senior year and I had relaxed a bit...I morphed more into the "granola" look which was probably a more natural fit for a girl who hails from California who would rather live on the beach and be barefoot all the time.  I haven't changed much since then.  That was June of 1994 (yes, part of me refuses to grow up). 

I got stuck back in the mid 1990's for a while until we got home and sat down to eat.  I should say I tried to eat but wasn't all that hungry since I cannot smell anything for the life of me which kills my appetite (not that it'll hurt me to skip a meal).  After dinner, Mimi and I went for the fortune cookies (which she loves to just smash to death and throw away...the other kids tried to eat the crumbs).  I found it interesting that the fortune that I got in my fortune cookie ended up reading the following:

"The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances."

After I read that I had to laugh to myself about the time I had just spent remembering all those high school insecurities.  I started thinking about what looks and appearances actually mean.  Are they important?  Sure.  Would I like to look better at times?  Of course.  But does how I look make me who I am or make you who you are?  I spent so much time in high school wondering what people thought of me based on what I wore or how skinny I was, or wasn't.  Even today, as a mom at age 33 I have a lot of those same insecurities.  I have many girls who are my friends and who are in my family who I think of as supermodels (in fact, one actually is a supermodel)!  But to me, what makes them beautiful is how loving they are, how much they care about me and are there for me. 

I stopped and wondered why I can judge these girls on their outer beauty as well as their inner beauty but when it comes to myself, I only look at what is outside.  I was reading Nie Nie Dialogues the other day and it dawned on me what real beauty is.  It's so much more than skin deep, it is what radiates from one's soul. 

When you got married, did you ever ask yourself if your spouse would still adore you if in an accident and didn't "look" like the person they were marrying?  I neglected to spend a lot of time on that before I got married.  More importantly than would your spouse still love you if your looks were gone may be the question of would you be able to see yourself as beautiful even without looks or fashion, or money to support it?  

For my children, nothing is more important to me than developing their spirits.  I want my girls to know that while beauty is fun and plays a role, it's not what should be the source of their happiness.  For my son, I want him to learn that when he chooses a wife, to think about the kind of mother she will make, not just what he and his friends think about her looks.  While I teach them these things I need to try to remind myself to practice what I preach. 

Sunday's are so good for this kind of thing don't you think?  Praying and pondering is good for the soul.  I feel that it's only when the beauty inside matches or surpasses the beauty on the outside that one feels whole.  I have a long way to go, but by the time I'm 35 I want to actually believe that my spirit is beautiful from within, regardless of how I look on the outside.  

Anyone else with me? 

Ode to...

.......Mr. Tanner.

Place: Dobson High, Mr. Turner's math class
Date: 1994
What: Inspiring Words that have never left me

Sometime this past week my oldest daughter decided to go through a box of my papers from high school and of course, they ended up scattered through out the house. Are you shocked? What else would my kids do with a box of my papers? It's a rule to throw them all over the place like a NYC ticker tape parade! She also had fun laughing at my old yearbooks and wondering why I wasn't a cheerleader, or should say scolding me for not being one.

So on Saturday I was hoovering (UK)/vacuuming (US) and my amazing new hoover (which actually works and does what it should) grabbed the corner of a paper sticking out from underneath my daughter's bedroom door into the hallway. See photo proof of how the piece of paper was almost completely destroyed.

I turned off the hoover and rescued the paper, of course I didn't know what it was but I never keep anything that isn't important so figured it was a birth certificate, or a first drawing or something equally as crucial.

But ironically it was actually something I was thinking about after I wrote my last entry about dreams. When I started asking in my last journal entry to start pondering about what happiness was, this paper was one thing that actually popped into my own mind. On this piece of paper were printed words that offered my younger self an early glimpse into what happiness should be, and from what sources it would never come from. As an adult the words mean more to me than they probably ever did to the 17 year old version of myself who originally held this piece of paper in her hands- an earlier version of myself who thought that by age 33 years old (a-hem, in other words by now) life would certainly be perfectly blissful all day every day, 24/7/365. This piece of paper contains some of the most awesome advice that a high school student could have ever hoped to receive- it is Mr. Tanner's "first day of math class" note.

For the record, I was, and am and will be forever more dreadful at math. If it weren't for my fear of math I would have become an oceanographer, or nurse, or architect, or any number of things that I wanted to be had it not been for my math struggles growing up. One time I even had a math teacher in junior high tell me that the left side of my brain must not have fully developed (at least he got fired for saying something so rude....I was a straight A student aside from math, but not because the left side of my brain never developed)!

I thought I would dislike Mr. Tanner based on the fact that I disliked math. Ended up I really liked him as a human being though and here is why, based on what he said to us in his note which reads:

"What is your passion? What is your dream? What drives you to accomplish that which no one else has? To be willing to stand up and make a difference in a society where people fear to be different? Are you one step ahead or one step behind the crowd? We cannot afford to waste our precious days for they will vanish as quickly as they come.

Will you be ordinary or extraordinary? Excellence has a price tag and many refuse to pay it.

Do you have a voice? Then speak out in the appropriate time. Use wisdom to guide your passion and reams to speak out that which burns in your soul. Let your tongue be set on fire to those words which are righteous and true.

Do you believe you were created for a purpose? Then set your sights on the things above and focus all your passion on that dream until you fulfill your destiny.

Will you be like the majority or the minority? Even if you lost everything but your life, your faith is more important than anything the world has to offer. Don't trade it in or pawn it off when times get tough or for the temporal pleasures of the world.

Never settle for second best for it will leave you like the rest. Easy paths are seldom fulfilling and often make crooked men. Take risks and soar above everyone else. Remember one final note. In all that you accomplish, keep your motives pure and never seek position or prestige. For by doing so you will the world by the motivation of love."

I don't know if Mr. Tanner actually wrote this, or if someone else did and he just loved the words as much as I do...but either way, I will always attribute it to him until I know someone else actually wrote it. My favorite line is about the idea of losing everything- and how faith is the one thing you can live with even with nothing else in the world. Maybe it's not just faith, but definitely love, family, friends and humanity of course. In this day and age, many of us are learning what is really important...the economy is stealing everything away from many of us. Suddenly the latest fashions, coolest gadgets and a brand new car every other year are things that many of us just cannot afford anymore, well, unless we don't want to put food on the table.

Mr. Tanner's note says it all to me really. Things in the end are nothing. Your outlook and the people you surround yourself with are really all that you can take with you in the end....and even if you don't believe you can take it with you (I do but know not everyone does), these are still the things that really make life worth living. It's probably illegal nowadays for a teacher to hand something like this out to students, sadly. Even if now, the state of the paper itself makes it look like could care less, the truth is that it's one of my prized possessions. I wonder if Mr. Tanner is still at Dobson?