Open letter to "Mom"

Dear Mom,

Thank you for patience. Thank you for giving me thankfulness. Thank you for making me industrious. Thank you for showing me God instead of giving me a god. Thank you for not worrying about me. Thank you for worrying too much. Thank you for accepting Taylor Swift into our family one day. Thank you for making me a dreamer (see the previous statement). Thank you for making me eat Irish Potatoes. Thank you for taking money off my allowance when I was sassy-frassy. Thank you for leaving me always wanting more.

Patience is kind, patience is cruel, but patience wins (25 years later).

Thank you for patience. Be patient with me.

Dream on blogosphere.

SL

Ya owe it to yourself!

I love when people keep people in check. I had a good friend of mine today tell me in so many words to, enjoy myself, enjoy life, because well, "i owe it to myself". 

I love it! Straight up reminded me of home. For some reason, Philadelphians love to tell one another "ahh comon' ya owe it to yourself!"

So blogosphere, "YA OWE IT TO YOURSELF!"

Think about that idea, but not selfishly. Not you owe yourself a trip to Nordstrom Rack or you owe yourself a peppermint latte before each and every class. These motives completely sideswipe the idea at the heart of owing it to yourself. Its about two very important things.

1. Take care of yourself 

2. Take care of others (i still think you deal with number 2 before 1 even comes into the question)

Lemme try and reframe this idea in a different way. So try and add these 5 ideas to your lexicon of "owing it to yourself".

1. Ya owe it to yourself to love when hurt is all you see

2. Ya owe it to yourself to be goodness, when hate is all you feel

3. Ya owe it to yourself to make loneliness obsolete

4. Ya owe it to yourself to give the hungry some food and good conversation

and finally 5. Ya owe it to yourself to give what has already been given to you

Thats all. Keep writing, i will. Keep laughing, i will. Keep loving, i will, Keep praying, i will. Keep dreaming, i do.

SL

Inconvenience: making things convenient

(so this is my bust, at 22, and i'm thinking, as usual) 

So I feel as if being a member of the greater society for 22 years strong leaves me entitled to a number of things. One full year into being a legal drinker, i feel as if i can pride myself on the simple fact that...well... I am not an alcoholic. Thanks.

I was just thinking, or more like my heart was just thinking, about how odd proximity becomes. I'm talking about people, i'm talking about relationships. The right place the right time. We are so enamored with space. Somehow we need SO MUCH space for ourselves, but the only time we actually go out of our way for other people is if they happen to be within our social space. Does that make sense?

I mean i guess it does but does that not sound sloth-ish.

I mean think about the last time you took time out to be a friend knowing that the means to get to that person would most likely be inconvenient. Ask yourself that right now.

I write most of this out of frustration. The last year of my life i've dealt with this very concept. I have had people who were supposedly the ones who were going to "have my back", make it easy to have my back, when its easy. 

Its a surreal experience to find yourself in a rut, on your way down, falling, so much so that your so called "friends" are inconveniently prefixed on something else, making your fall convenient. Just think about your so called "social circles". Think about who you hurt by alienating (even if it is unintentional). This is not to say "create a circle, and be strong only in that circle". It is however to say that you can't actually have a circle when you somehow disconnect one of your most important links.

Thats all, i'm done. I hope this message gets to the people it needs to get to, I think you know who you are, if you don't, ask.

SL

/unexpected/...

Just to start: I've never addressed this blatant fact but I have absolutely no idea who actually reads this. At times, I think it would be helpful to know who actually reads what I write so if you do read, maybe poke me on facebook. Because without a motivation, why write. Without poverty, why solve it. Get it? This feels like the start, this is the powder to my Easy Mac. Add the water, heat, stir, and BAM... Mac and cheese

B.S. i know. I pump out straight bovine feces sometimes.

But you know what else is unreal... what we constantly reinforce as real. I take everything I think is real, "for sure", a done deal, etc. and make those things literally that... over and no longer in need to work.

I constantly am reminded of how much work I have to do. I've always believed I "deserved" something special, something that works, and I always thought that "something special" would come naturally, or more that it would "feel right". Yet everytime I feel it's right, it's never right.

Ok, i'm rambling but the point is...

don't expect what you think is expected... because it's all unexpected.

Also see the film Burn After Reading and think about the following. Not a great film but think on the following few things.

Take a positive/fatalistic yet optimistic spin on what it really means to live in a modern society where you can only trust traffic, taxes and death. Is it not worth it to trust your life with a significant other? Is trust so hard in this facebook, eharmony world? Journey said it best, and I think about it everyday, no matter how hard it seems, and how far off she is... 

"DON'T STOP BELIEVIN'"

Pray, love, live, and hopefully in the end, expect the unexpected

sl

I don't want to follow...you

You have taken everything I thought was guaranteed and made it questionable,

You make the difficult seem really easy, key word there is seem,

You have made the recipe for success different, you define life by numbers,

You make it so easy to give up and give in,

You have made consequence a means instead of a lesson learned,

You try to make hearts break without vision, without answers,

You throw people down,

You kick,

You rip, you tear, then you run

You pick what looks good to make good fall, stumble, and break

However,

You may get some, but you won't have everything,

You can make my goals and aspirations seem as difficult as possible, the difficult will become possible,

You can't make it too easy to give in, i'll keep pushing,

You can't break more hearts than He can fix,

You can't throw people down without someone holding our head before we fall,

Rip, tear, kick, manipulate, and run, give us whatever you have, whatever you want to do, it doesn't matter

It really doesn't matter.

Get to your knees, eventually, you will break, you will fall, your vices will become powerless, what holds me back will be gone, i'll come swinging

i will fly, i will laugh, i will feel great joy and love and most of all, peace will flow, and i will drink from it

the poor will be rich, the sick will run, the unfortunate will be fortunate, the blind will see the sunset, the depressed will roll in fields of ecstasy, blue will become ivory, colors will fade and all will mean one thing...

that love has come

SL

Where the light is...

So i've been meaning to write this for quite some time now and it's finally ready, maybe, maybe not. But now seems like a good time to "launch".

This isn't about the hook of a song or a sweet music DVD that somehow found a way to combine phenomenal musical prowess with attractive and dramatic cinematography. This is about a fundamental concept of "the light", and all that is "good".

In saying "keep me where the light is" we somehow infer that because of the hopeful light, we are somehow running from something that is hopeless. It's the Yin to the Yang. For every failure there is a success. For every step backward, there is a step forward. But, however, challenge yourself to pray, beg, plead, hope that somehow, you can stay where that light is.

We all make mistakes. We always will. I always will. This is not to say "oh well, it's natural for me to trip up and fall short of my expectations, so i guess i won't expect better of myself" (for the Paul people in the crowd, you know what i'm talking about.) EXPECT BETTER, YOU CAN DO BETTER.

This is not your reaffirmation, this is you call. Better is your future.

So think about your light. Think about THE light. Think about what it is that makes your goals, "your goals". What are your true motivations? I know I don't ask myself what my motivations are near enough but it brings me back to the importance of the light.

My prayer is stay where that light is. This isn't hopeless or helpless. It is however hopeful and humble.

Keep me, come on, please, please, keep me where the light is.

SL

Anymore it just feels right to make anything you feel,...feel right. Thats redundant, I know. But think about what you feel and keep thinking about how what you feel is really reflected in other people's perception of you. It's possible that my world is coming down and no one knows it unless things associated with such are expressed in that manner. Ex: The only way a coal miner can tell if the air is thin is by looking at the canary. 

The struggle comes in opening that feeling up before the canary dies.

This "feeling" doesn't have to be good or bad, exuberant or gloomy, compressed or depressed, whatever that feeling it is, that feeling cannot be understood by itself and in itself. That is unless pressure builds to such a point where the floodgates open and "the bird dies". I think the goal has to be to prevent such an occurrence.

I think recently and within the last year, i've seen things build up in a number a ways and in a number of places and in response to that, very rarely do people choose to alleviate that pent up (pressure, stress, etc) because to go out of your way to make that happen is uncomfortable and inconvenient.

But should we expect the people we surround ourselves with to take care of those things? Is it our job to attend to others? I think so. Whatever happened to the Golden.

I could go on but it starts and ends with taking care of each other. Look out for 1 after 2 is taken care of. Forget throwing all your chips in on someone who "might" let you down. Pile sky high the hopes in someone, something, you KNOW won't EVER throw you to the side for someone/something else.

I ramble, i know, but i guess thats just what happens when my mind gets clogged. 

SL