If you could fly… …where would you fly ?
I imagine that I’d fly straight up into the sky and then back down to the ground as quickly as possible stopping at the last moment to pull up into flight again just because I could.
Where would you fly ….if you could fly?
“The reason birds can fly and we can’t is simply because they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.” ― J.M. Barrie, The Little White Bird
When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It’s a whole different way of thinking.
Elayne Boosler
I eat my problems.
I never had this problem when I was younger, or maybe I didn’t notice, but as I get older I can clearly ‘see’ that I do this.
Okay, what do I mean by this you may, or may not, ask?
I eat when I’m depressed. I swallow my words too. I stuff down my emotions. I ingest the pain I’m in and hold it all inside and then I have a sundae. It then appears on my hips. Voila! Just like magic; but not.
I never knew this about myself because it never showed up on the outside until lately.
Friggin’ 50!
So, is the answer to go to the gym more or is it to tell everyone to fuck off? Make myself happy instead of making myself ice cream? Take a break from making everyone else feel good and regurgitate all this negativity; shed the burdens; lose the weight of everyone else and have a salad instead?
Definitely time for a change.
Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us.
Peter De Vries
Necessity is the mother of taking chances.
Mark Twain
It’s true. You can’t go home again. I tried and it didn’t work. I am not the same person and the house didn’t fit me anymore. I actually wonder what contortions of personality I had subjected myself to in order to make it fit the first time. Well, I obviously didn’t like it or I wouldn’t have left in the first place, right?
Have you ever romanticized your past? Thought longingly that, given the chance, you’d do it all so differently. You’d be kinder, patient, more appreciative with the known and familiar.
Think again, my friends. The unknown, as scary as it might seem, is ripe with possibility. The past, while comfortable, lacks potential. That well-worn path leads you in the same direction each time you follow it.
To the house that didn’t fit, that you discarded, or that discarded you.
Forge a new path. Build a new home. Be brave. Take a chance.
Take chances, make mistakes. That’s how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave.
Mary Tyler Moore
It always seems impossible … until it’s done.
Nelson Mandela
This week I began step one in the plan to launch the nonprofit I’ve been working on. I suppose it’s not really step one because I’ve been doing many things, including mountains of paper work and putting a board together, but this week began a more public launch. I made the first steps to teach in a community development organization. It’s important for me to partner with other local nonprofits in order to make mine successful, so this feels like the beginning. My NPO will have a workplace literacy component, so getting back to teaching adult ESL courses is something I’ve been looking forward to. The students are all recent immigrants and, as always, there are a few students that really knock me out. This time it was a couple from a small African country that had been in the U.S. a mere two months and were already a month in to an English language class. Their lives, and that of their two children, have been difficult, yet there was no trace of self-pity. They have been through things that would have crushed most people, yet they are optimistic. They have lost every material possession, yet they are grateful. There is a mix of pain and beauty in their eyes as they struggle with the language. It moves my heart in ways I can’t describe and makes me so sure that I am moving in the right direction. I am so honored to have the chance to touch their lives. People, my own age, starting over with nothing but their spirit and determination for something better. It is humbling, and it should be.
It made me wonder about people I know. People with every opportunity, yet they continue to be angry for all that isn’t handed to them. Instead of working harder, they continue to find fault with everything around them rarely looking at their own hand in the way their lives have turned out. Is it easier to place blame? Well, maybe in the short run. Is it narcissism that causes some people to blame everyone around them for their own circumstances? Is it having so very little that causes others to just work that much harder when life is unfair?
It didn’t take long but I’ve learned more than I taught, and I’m sure that nothing is impossible unless you decide it is.
When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.
Lao Tzu
I’ve been away from home for a little over a month. It has been wonderful and mind clearing. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking abut what I wanted the life I live every day to look like in places I’ve never been to before and may never see again. For me, that is when I do my best thinking. In my own home I see the past, the things I should be doing, and all the future events on the horizon. In another space all of the good, the bad, and the ugly is cleared away and I can focus on decisions and directions. So, the first thing I learned is that I know myself. I feel much clearer and my priorities are in order. I have a plan and I’m a person that loves a plan. I’m never happier than when I know where I want to go and I have mapped out my options and am on the brink of starting something new. In June I was overwhelmed and confused. In August I’m a force to be reckoned with. Travel as therapy. Do you think I could get my insurance carrier to pay for that?
“It’s a funny thing about comin’ home. Looks the same, smells the same, feels the same. You’ll realize what’s changed is you.”
-The Curious Case of Benjamin Button-
I think it’s time for me to be more child-like. I’m tired of being adult about everything.
I was on the beach yesterday watching a family with small children. One curly-haired, blue-eyed, cherub of a girl complete with a yellow bikini making a sand cake for her mother and her slightly older, more serious looking, brother in his boxer bathing suit with small blue whales on them eating a juicy peach and singing a song I don’t recognize. They are adorable, sweet, angelic…oh wait he’s ripping the shovel out of her hand and screaming, “MINE”, she has her mouth open but no sound is coming out, she’s standing up, still no sound…wait for it, wait for it…WOW. She lets out one blood- curdling scream and falls backwards into the sand. Her brother looks on, unfazed, and then continues digging the hole he had been neglecting while eating his lunch. She screams some more and her parents, clearly embarrassed but not unfamiliar with the theatrics, try to quiet her. “Don’t be a baby”, Dad says, while her brother is completely absorbed in digging and singing.
Oh please, let her scream I want to say. How I wish I could do that. Just once. Like say when the guy stole my parking spot or when the woman on the cell phone cut in front of me in line like I wasn’t even there.
Right down on the ground screaming. Can you imagine?
I think we could learn a thing or two about feeling our emotions without apologizing or holding them in from children. How do we get so repressed? Of course throwing yourself down and wailing isn’t the answer but maybe more honesty in our emotions is still an option.
“Hiding how you really feel and trying to make everyone happy doesn’t make you nice, it just makes you a liar.”― Jenny O’Connell, The Book of Luke
I’m an idealist. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.
Carl Sandburg
| “I had as many doubts as anyone else. Standing on the starting line, we’re all cowards.” |
| Alberto Salazar quotes (American sprinter)What a relief it was to read those words. Alberto Salazar won three consecutive NYC Marathons and the Boston Marathon in addition to competing in the Olympics. The thought of him, standing on the starting line, being a coward in his own mind is somehow very comforting to me. |
This week I am tying up loose ends at school. Wednesday is my last day. I’ll pack up my boxes and shut the door for the last time. It’s going to be really weird. I’m not completely sure how I feel about it. I told one friend who has known me for a long time that I think I’m just a little scared of the unknown. She laughed at me and I had to laugh myself. I’ve never been afraid of change or a challenge or anything else for that matter.
So, I’m approaching the starting line and feeling like a bit of a coward and I have a few doubts. Maybe, there is just a little fear of all that freedom. Anything is possible. I’m also getting a excited. I can feel freedom and the excitement of a new challenge.
Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.
Thank you to Genie Speaks for nominating me for the Illuminating Blog Award. Yesterday started with an award and ended with an award. There were all kind of great happenings in between too. If I had to pick a “groundhog day”, yesterday would be high on the list.
The best part of these awards are that I get to possibly introduce people that read my blog to some other really wonderful writers such as Genie Speaks. She is one of those writers who always has something interesting to say and says it in a way that you want to just pull up a chair and have a cup of coffee with her. Please take a look at her blog.
Okay, now I have to share one random thing. I am not one of those people with a clear path, my life seems to be the stringing together of random things, but I’ll give you just one.
I have had many jobs in my life but the one that I am most proud of, enjoyed the most, and did for free, was as area coordinator for an organization that brought children, ages 7-12, to the United States from Northern Ireland, mostly Belfast and Derry, for six weeks in the summer. These kids came from rough circumstances during the most recent worst of the “Troubles”. I raised the funds, placed them with host families and coordinated events and did a lot of promoting. I was even featured on the World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Most importantly, this experience allowed my family to bring the same girl, Sarah, from Belfast back each summer for 10 years. She has become a lovely young woman and works with a community development organization in Belfast. She always told me one day she would do something to pay me back for bringing her to the U.S. each summer. I always told her to pay it forward. Now she does, everyday.
Okay, now for the really fun part. I get to share five bloggers whose blogs I consider illuminating. To illuminate is defined as to provide intellectual or spiritual enlightenment and understanding. The following people do that on a regular basis:
http://positiveway.wordpress.com/
http://400daystil40.wordpress.com/
My wish today is that you have a day exactly like I had yesterday and that you all keep writing!
Magnolia Beginnings 