FADES IN THE BACKGROUND

So I was chatting it up on facebook with a friend of mine whom I haven't talked with in a long time. One of those friends that you always got along with but time and space just got in the way. Well there we were, she and I were gabbing on about our love for Scrabble and how we can't find anyone to play with us anymore as if no time had passed.

As time walked on in the conversation my grandmother's passing came up and my friend brought up her mother and how this past year was the year that marked my friend being alive longer than she knew her mother. I don't know why, but i teared up. I cried (and I am not a crier.) My friend talked about going to Italy because she realized that life is too short and you can't wait around to accomplish your goals. She talked about how her mother's death taught her that lesson. And as I was talking about my grandmother I started realizing how special that woman was cause of how she treated and loved everyone, despite her sharp wit and tongue.

However, this is not a "life-is-short" blog; we all know that lesson. However, as time marches on we talk less and less about our loved ones that have passed; or we stop discussing why the person we are with or why our family is important to us; or we stop mentioning the things that our loved ones did for us (no matter how small.) This is a very dangerous thing to stop talking about.

If we stop bringing these things up from time to time then they begin to fade into the background and just become the pieces of cloth that is on our skin, and they no longer are the threads that binds the cloths together. These are the things that make us whole. The way someone completes us, the lesson we learned when the person passed, or the little thing that someone did that made us go, "that is why i love them." Those are the threads.

For example, take it whenever in life you learned that important life lesson of "life is short" That time when we learned that lesson helped us put into perspective that hose dreams we have for ourselves or the goals of traveling or whatever are slowly losing time. Therefore that lesson is the thread that can sew the dream to the reality.

Or: maybe the person we love is getting on our deepest nerves one day, almost to the point of us just wanting to walk away. That memory of the time they let you sing in the car without asking you to shut up could be thread that holds the walking away to staying together.

We can't stop talking about these important things. These are the moments in life when we had realizations; when something that never made sense before became clear, and if we mention those moments but then begin to walk away from them and lose them out of our vocabulary, then we tend to go back to the way we were before the lesson was learned. What progress have we made when we do that?

So I say that if your grandmother made you realize that goals are to be accomplished or if your special someone put a note of gratitude in your car visor and you understood why you were with that person, or if your dog wanting you to love on him made you realize that simple things are important too, than don't stop talking about it. Mention it. Bring it up. And keep in mind that the friends that roll their eyes at the cheesiness of the conversation are the friends that haven't learned that you have to mention these things, cause these are the things that are the fabric of true happiness.

It's not achieving the goal that is the true joy, it is the moment when you realize you can do it.

BITE THE BULLET

Love. This is the only word in any language that is complicated to understand. I mean it has so many levels (and you're not always happy when you feel it which makes it more confusing.) Love holds a lot of weight, as it should, but I think sometimes it holds too much weight. As a society we assign it a place in the stratosphere. We make love this big thing in the sky that is graced on certain people. We make love this thing that people have to work for. Love is supposed to be a power not a "thing." And the truth of the matter is: EVERYONE DESERVES LOVE!

Love has levels. There is a love of one person to another person. Love of parent to child. Love of friend to friend. Love of person to dog. Love of yourself. Love of a type of clothing. Love of a type of beverage. Love of our favorite curse word. Love of God. Love of religion.

The list of loves is a very long list and it can go on and on and on. However, here is the funny thing: we really are careful about using the word. We never tell people that we love them enough. It is very odd you know. I mean we feel it but we hold it back; we keep it from people as if it is a gold ring they should come and get.

My theory is simple. I don't think that love starts until you bite the bullet and actually say the words. Yes, I know actions speak louder than words, and I would never say that people can't show love by actions, of course they can (a dog is a case and point - or a cat for those of you who love those (but that is another blog)).

Is it uncomfortable to say we love someone? HELL YES IT IS!!! It is extremely hard. If it was easy we would just say the word without any weight attached to it. However, times come when we feel it and we want to say it but we don't cause we think it would just be too weird, or the person we said it to would think we were strange. So much care into what the person woudl think.

I say don't care! Say the word, cause the fact of the matter is this. We can show love all day long and people can see it through our actions, but let's face it, sometimes words are just more powerful. They mean more cause we can all identify with the fact that it took courage to say them (cause it takes courage when WE want to say them.)

So I know this wasn't a deep blog but please take this away from this: BITE THE BULLET AND JUST TELL THE ONES YOU LOVE THAT YOU LOVE THEM!!! (And mean it, cause we always know.)

HOLES IN OUR SYSTEM

So there is one thing about this blog I make an effort to refrain from discussing; my personal life. This is supposed to be a blog based on my ideas from my experiences. However, the recent experience I have had cannot pull the personal life from my thoughts at all.

I rang in the New Year with a bit of a heartbreak, the death of my first grandparent. I could go on and on about her, but that is not what this blog entry is about. However, I must say something about her and I can tell you that this woman knew how to believe in something and knew how to make people feel like they were not above or below her if they didn't agree. That is a remarkable fete that made her well loved and appreciated by people from both up the street and in her heart.

Considering this is the first funeral I have ever been to where I sat in the first couple of pews reserved for family, needless to say a lot of thoughts went through my head. None of them as strong as watching my grandfather during the week I was in Little Rock. This man spent 63 years married to this woman. I have seen the face of what true heartbreak is and it isn't a relationship that falls apart after a year or two. True heartbreak is watching someone you love move on without you, and since I love my grandfather my heart was breaking for him. It breaks now as I type these words.

I figure that when someone passes no matter what our belief of life after death, we are left with holes in our system. It is like a little piece of us has been taken with them. I felt that yesterday while looking at a picture of the family that I had to leave 17 hours away. I feel that my grandmother is has left several holes in my system. I think those holes get filled in though, and the way i picture it in my head is like this: picture just the outline of a body with holes in it like cheese. Now fill in everything around the holes. I think those holes get filled in with light. In my head I see light just bursting through those holes.

Now I don't know what this light is, I'm sorry to say. Maybe it is memory, maybe it is an odd mixture of happiness and sadness (cause that is what I feel.) I don' t know but in my head i just see holes filled with light, but there is definitely a piece of us that is missing, that isn't part of us anymore; and yet it still is a huge part of us. I hope that makes sense.

I know this isn't scientifically correct, but I come from the impression that my family is a part of me. Inside of me is 50% of my mother and 50%my father. Of that percentage 25% of me is everyone of my grandparents. They are with me at all times. Take that however your thoughts allow it to take you, maybe it is in spirit, maybe in blood, or just in the genes I carry with me at all times, but inside of me they are there and they are alwys prevelent.

They exist in the way I do my crosswords, they exist in the expressions I make (or the curse words I say), or the way I pull up my pants when they get too saggy. They exist in the way I use my fork, in the way I love poached eggs rather then scrambled, in the way I drive my car, in the way I sing constantly. They are there and there is no way to get them out of my inner self. I am proud to have part of them in there. I am proud that that light in those holes are shining through. However, I do not like that someone has to pass for you to see how truly deep those holes are.

I understand that as time goes on the outlook for everyone looks similar, we get old and we pass. However, without the death part, the life part doesn't hold any meaning. I think we should all realize where we come from and get to know our family (both blood and non-blood) and just love them for who they are (faults and all) because if we don't then the holes left within us will just be holes and there will be no light to shine through. Maybe the light that shines through is that part of us that is them.

FRIENDS & CELEBRITES

Okay, so today on my way to work something struck me (no not another car). A thought struck me while I was on the phone. Through the conversation I was told that a friend of mine (not the one I was talking to) was leaving tomorrow for L.A. The only reason this person came up is because we workout with her on Tuesdays (today being Tuesday, of course, I inquired about the time to meet tonight.) I found out that she was going to L.A. and when I said, "I didn't know about this" the response was simply this, "It was on her facebook."

Last week one of my closest friends was having a party (far be it for me to not show up somewhere where there is alcohol.) This friend told me about it, but didn't have any information at the time. So when Friday rolled around, I needed to know the address of where we were going, and the response was, "It was on my facebook."

The point is this...facebook (and I do love my facebook), but facebook (or the sites similar) seem to be the way we are finding out about people. Now when I say "people" I don't mean the people you haven't seen for ten years, or the people you have just met overnight at some coffee bar on 4th Ave. I mean friends, people you know well; people you spend a great deal of your time with; family members even to some.

I think with every new addition to make the world smaller, we somehow find a way to make it big again and take away all of the work we have accomplished. I love facebook for the fact that we can keep in touch with the people that we don't have around as much anymore, and for that I am grateful that the world is getting smaller. However, with that power is coming consequences. We seem to be communicating to the people we know the most through facebook or texting, and we don't seem to be talking anymore. Our modern definition of communication is making the people who live far away close to us, but with this medium it is making the people who live next door farther from us.

Far be it for me to say this and not be a victim of it. I am guilty as everyone else of having God only knows how many texts per month (thank you unlimited text plan) and contacting people through the internet to meet them (thank you facebook chat; although you suck sometimes.) I am guilty of this just like everyone else.

However, this kind of communication process is both scary and exciting. We are reading up about our best friends as if they were some kind of celebrities; as if they were people that we don't really know, but instead people that we are living through. With every step closer to each other we are distancing ourself further from people.

We need to use this new technological power to our advantage, but at the same time we should be careful that this technology doesn't end up taking advantage of us. All I am saying, to myself as well, is that we should not give up facebook (Lord, I think I would cry for weeks), but instead take the time out to call the people you love, to TALK to the ones who mean something in your life. Let them know they love you.

Talking on the phone is the new writing a letter. You know that great feeling when you get a letter in the mail? The feeling that means that somebody has taken out the time to write out a note, to send it through the mail to you. That is now what talking on the phone is like....someone is taking out the time.

No facebook or text can compare with the power of the human voice. After all remember, the originals or anything are kind of hard to beat. So the original communications are better off not being lost just because technology made it easier.

THE ZOO

So this weekend was $5 day at the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa. When I was told that a normally $20 charge was going down to $5, well who am I to pass up a deal to see caged animals for cheap? So the four of us going were just going about a typical day in the zoo. The talker was talking, the photographer was photographing, the smokers were smoking (and no i won't tell you which one I was; you can guess....okay I was the talker.)

Moving on. So there we were just staring at all of the animals. Watching the monkeys, thinking they were cute; watching the rhinos, thinking they were massive; watching the birds, and not thinking much. Well then the clouds opened up and rain came down in droves. The four of us ran to the nearest shelter we could possibly find. Well, what do you know, there we were in the home of my favorite animal ever, the white tiger.

All of a sudden we had no choice, unless we wanted to be drenched, but to sit and watch the tigers. We couldn't just walk and look and walk on; we wanted to be dry so we stayed under the shelter of the white tiger habitat. There was no other choice but to watch these proud creatures.

Fortunately, we had quite a playful little duo. There were two tigers that decided all of a sudden they wanted to play. There they went just splashing though the water, bringing paws to paws and attempting to bite (but as huge as they are, they just appeared like little puppies). They splashed through thier little pool that was being soaked in the water falling from the sky, but they were enjoying their time so much.

Then sitting on a stoop that was built for them was another white tiger. This one seemed so much more regal then the two smaller kittens. It was massive and just sitting on its roost like it owned the place. Sitting their nonchalantly with the slashes of black on it's white fur (kind of like their paw slashed paint over their body.)

This massive creature turned to face the window i was gawking through and he just stared; looked away, looked back, and just stared. He kept repeating this. As he did this (I say he, to be honest, wasn't really sure and wasn't going to check) I looked into the face of this tiger and I don't know what happened, but something struck me, and I started tearing up. There was beauty I had never stopped to notice before. I mean here was, what I consider to be, the most beautiful creature ever created, and there were these visuals I never stopped to look at before. I looked into the animals eyes, and how they were shaped. I couldn't go anywhere so I watched how the creatures slashed through the water playing. I was fixated when it started playing with this ball hanging from the stand that was created for them. I couldn't stop looking at the one just lying down. These were creatures that I love, but it felt as if I saw them for the first time.

This moment just got me thinking about all the other things that I may have missed at the zoo. Maybe there is something about the elephant that I missed because I stopped to look and then moved on to the giraffe. Maybe I missed something even more gorgeous then normal in the girffe becuase I stopped to look only to think about the zebra in the area next to him.

As a culture we don't really stop to appreciate the natural things in life that exist around us. We think the sunset is gorgeous, but we never stop and sit and stare and literally watch it fall behind the horizon. We stop to look at it, think about it's beauty, and then go on about our lives. We never actually stop and APPRECIATE these things.

The world is getting more and more fast-paced (even at the zoo you are, in a way, kind of maneuvered through as if it was a nature based IKEA). We don't stop to appreciate the things that man had no control over creating.

The sun; the moon, the stars; the flowers; the breeze; the animals; the ocean; the smiles; ourselves. We don't overlook any of these things. We know they exist, I mean we would have to be complete baffoons to not know they exist; but we really don't ever take the time to appreciate them for ourselves.

Beauty is all around us, it basically inhabits every square inch of where we live. But as I stop to think about the subject, I don't know a single building that is so amazing that it beats the view of a sunset lighting up a horizon. I don't know of a single work of art that is so breathtaking that it can take away those split seconds when that proud white tiger glanced in my direction.

We have to cherish these moments. They are free. They are breathtaking. They are natural. They are there for us to view. I mean what have you got to lose except time? Of course when you ponder that statement, what is time anyway? What is all this nautral beauty when put against time, after all that is man-made.

Ready for Change

I have been a very bad person (not like that), with regard to keeping up with my blog. In fact, looking at the date of my last entry, I have been a despicable person at keeping up with my blog. So many ideas have entered my head within the last six months that I have been dying to write about, but a horrible excuse like laziness set in (or it was a good reason like time restraints). Either way, the fact of the matter is that I have been craving to write many more entries, and yet I have not been doing it. WELL, NOT ANYMORE!

I woke up this morning at 5a.m. and I just knew I had to write something. Do you know how you wake up and you can't remember what you were dreaming about, but you are left with the remnants of an emotion and you don't know where it came from? Well, that was this morning. For some reason I woke up with this tightening feeling in the pit of my gut that felt like an indication of change coming. I had this odd feeling like everything I know is about to get up-ended, in a good way. Hey, change is frightening no matter what, and I kind of teared up thinking about the thought of change from my normal routine.

I turned 30 about a two weeks ago, and even though 30 is still a young age, at the same time there is something mile-stoneish (yeah I made up a word) about the number. The other day I said, "You know in my 30 years..." and you know what? It felt good. I felt wiser, I felt like I had an authority of some kind. I don't know why, but I felt, "I am no longer in my 20's, I can now say that I have lived a bit."

I think I am ready for change (where I wasn't before) becuase I know myself more now then I ever have in the past. I know who I am, and I have to admit I like myself. I have learned that if you are proud of who you are on the inside, and you love that person a lot, then it doesn't matter what job you have, or what mistakes you have made, becuase in the end you are happy to be with yourself, and you better like yourself cause it is the one piece of company you can't get rid of.

I am ready for change because I know what qualities I possess, and I understand the ones I lack (or don't really excel at). I know how to use the qualities I possess in order to try and develop and enhance the qualities I don't have as strong a handle on yet.

I think when you start getting those mixture of excited and scared feelings, I think you are ready to tackle change. It means you are wanting it, but you are not going to rush into any decisions.

This may not be like the other blog entries with any kind of philosophical discussion. This is more personal. I look around at people all the time, and I am more observant then people think I am. I watch, and I pay attention. People are not happy with themselves. We don't take the time we need to develop ourselves, we are too busy trying to gain. We are spending so much time improving our outside or what we have so that people can perceive us how we want them to. We think those are the ways to improv how we feel about ourselves....how others perceive you is not how you perceive you.

I am happy to say that I am going to be doing more blog entries now (thank God I got an idea and wrote it down). I am also proud to say that my advancement in life is inevitable, becuase I am going to work hard for my personal change, and just hope that that will motivate people to change themselves. Crazy thought, but who is up for the challenge? :)

Thanks for waiting for me to write again guys.

A Quick Thought for the New Year

I was thinking about something the other day and I just wanted to share with anyone reading. We are heading into a very tough financial time in this world's history. Money is going to be tight. Our emotions and our spirits are going to be tested. We are going to have to struggle to prove to ourselves that we are capable of surviving this crisis (and we will prove it to ourselves.)

However, in times like this, appropriately, our survival mode goes into hyperactive. We start to worry about ourselves. We fight for more money (becuase we are in need of it for the bills), and we also want to make ourselves feel better so we try to take mini-vacations or we do activities that make us smile or laugh. These things are all important, there is no doubt, we should want to accomplish these goals. However, I don't necissarily agree that in times like these that this way of thinking should be our main focus.

I think that instead of taking more mentality, we should be giving more. I think that this is the time to show the deepness of the human spirit. See when we are looking out for numero uno then that is one person caring about one person. However, if people start trying to give more and looking out for others more, then what happens is that now we have many people looking out for us, as we are looking out for them. Our odds to succeed are better, we have more people in our corner. In return, they have more people in their corner.

Maybe it is a pipe dream to some people, but John Lennon said in Imagine, "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." Here is the funny thing about pipe dreams; people all believe in pipe dreams. Everyone thinks pipe dreams are two things, amazing thoughts and unattainable thoughts. Isn't that funny? We all agree with them, but we don't think it will ever happen. So if we all agree then why is it an impossibility?

So here is my challenge to myself and to anyone reading this (even if we are 8 strong), when times get tough (and let's not kid ourselves, times are going to get tough) then we start giving more, we start thinking of others more, and we start providing more. The funny thing, no matter what you can to make you smile when times are tough, nothing goes as deep to the heart and soul as giving to those who are needing that protection. Not one thing is as permanant as that feeling.

Happy New Year, and I hope all your resolutions turn into realities. :)