CategoryWriting

What is Life?

In life, you learn things you didn’t before know possible. You learn things about people. About friends, about family, about yourself, but mostly you learn things about life itself. You learn that living is not planning each and every step. You learn that living is not walking around with no clue as to what life begins and ends with. You learn about how there is no answer to the simplest questions, and that there are bad people in the world. You learn that not everyone wears a smile, and not everyone deserves one. You learn about what’s called “truth”, and you learn about what are called “lies”. These two seem to be the only things that people question. The only thing they wonder about. There’s always all this talk about black and white and what is clear and what is vague, yet no one does anything about it. They do sit there though… They do watch as we cripple under what we think is living. Except the truth is that we never start living until we know what the word means. We never start living until we can fully understand that life has nothing to do with what the truth is or what lies are. Life only has to do with answers. Answers that we find by living. When we can see that, that is when we truly become who we are. That is when everything clicks. That is utopia. That is peace. And there will still be questions that make you lost. Questions that run loose through your head trying to make sense of what is not made to be made sense of, but that, that is also living. Not having answers, that is living. Because with these questions we become enticed to discover the core of what we want. With these questions we are left with no choice but to find what the answer is. The truth is that life is not life when you have your answers handed to you. The lie, is that living life will always be easy. Like I said, in life you learn things you didn’t before know possible. In life you learn how to live. 

Listen to the voices of the wind…

I need a favor. I need you to just listen and not speak, and slightly ignore me. I’m letting out an idea, a thought of sorts, one that roams through my brain and makes a disaster that has retorts.

There is beauty in even the softest touches. There is love in even the worst mistakes. There is pain in even the most beautiful of faces. And there is wonder in even the oldest of places. In even these places lie my hopes. In even these places lie my dreams. It is only here where time holds still. Where we each run past with ideas and faith. Where we each reach out for a familiar face. Perhaps I am crazy, quite lost and undefined, but it is here in this place that I find, freedom is free and peace is of one mind. It is odd here. Unique and quite different. Gorgeous and very terrifying. It is scary here, in this place where you can be. Because here will lie the truth we all seek. In this place where time stands still, we all will wonder, ponder and think. In this place we will find ourselves and who our hearts belong to. It is this place that I hope to belong to. In this world of fear and imperfections. In this world of loss and no direction. It is here that lies my empty field. My empty field of grass so green, of honeycomb in the air… my empty filled with dandelions in the wind and crisp leaves in my feel. In this field, so empty and green, lies my heart, open too. And there in my heart will secrets unfold. My story out, never untold. It is this place that lives in that world. It is this place in which I will unfurl. My final hope lies in thee, that you shall let, your place find me.. For only then, will you see, what has been living inside of me.

Hope, Faith, and Love

There comes a point in everyone’s life where they don’t know what they want. Where people stumble and fall and cry and change. Where people become the opposite of what they were. Where people are the same and yet different all at once. When you’re sitting there and you’re lost, it feels as if the whole world is going to cave in on you. It feels as if there’s no light. As if there’s no air. As if someone reached into your lungs and stopped every single breath you took. It’s scary. It’s a million things all at once. And throughout those million things, there’s only one person causing the fear, ourselves. You see, when you’re “lost” you’ve lost the three greatest things you ever learned in life, hope, faith, and love. The three pillars of what society leans upon. It’s wrong to ignore these things, yes it’s true, but the worst part about it, isn’t the fact that you ignore these things. It is the fact that when we ignore these things, we ignore what makes us human. We ignore what makes us, fundamentally, us. I know that I am a nobody right now. Right now what I know of life is close to nothing. But here’s what I think life is all about, I think it’s about this everlasting hope. This breathtaking type of hope that lifts you up and takes you home. I think it’s about faith. Faith in something bigger than just you. Faith in something bigger than us all. Faith in what we could be. Faith in what we have. I think it’s about love. Because, love? It doesn’t just happen. It takes time, it takes patience, it takes being lost, it takes needing a hug, it takes accepting that you’re wrong. It takes accepting that there’s another path. It takes seeing what others can’t. Overall, hope, faith, love, they all make us. They create us. They lead us when we have lost our way. They are our lighthouse in a vast ocean of confusion. They are our pillars in the largest fortress humanity has ever seen. They are our warm embrace and they are everything we will ever need. They are what we miss when we don’t know it. So yeah, what I know of life right now is nothing, but I’m learning. I am learning what will save me today, tomorrow, and every day. I am learning the three pillars of life. I am learning the three pillars of me.

The Eternal Ticking of Time

I wrote down this entry almost 2 years ago, and yet I wrote nothing. I suppose that is the finality of time now isn’t it? To haunt in every corner, to tug at every smile, to drag the clouds across the sky. And yet, we put so much certainty into it. We put so much faith into something that is deemed as an illusion. We put faith in an inconvenience… I suppose that truly shows the type of society we are. I suppose it truly shows just what type of world we live in. One where people put faith in illusions, instead of God. One where people who can’t handle change crave it. One where those who deserve happiness don’t always get it. One where right is wrong and wrong is right. One where not much makes sense. One that feels doomed from the start. That’s where the story should end really… That’s where the horror of time should’ve done all that it could possibly do, but you see, that’s the thing about time, there’s too much of it, at times we simply don’t know what to do with it. That’s when it becomes painfully obvious: Time is not a death sentence, it is not a crime or a retort. Time is the flowing of history. Time is the stuff of our very stars. Time is where the broken pieces of our souls lie, simply waiting to be discovered. Time is where we find peace, and where we find clarity. Time, once our loss, proves in fact to be our gain. People forget that time, while cruel, is also our greatest friend, it stays with us, even when we see the end. It holds our hands in the moments we need it most, comes to comfort us just when it seems too close. It weeps for us and seeps into every corner of our lives, even whilst we sleep. So yes, we can hate time, we can loathe it with no avail, but why hate a thing that has not yet failed? Why hate a thing that has not yet gone and left a trail?

“Who lies for you, lies against you” John Locke

Am I the only one who gave up on trust? I used to think it was so important, I used to give it so willingly. So easily. Now I fear that I’ll never give it fully to anyone ever again. Is that so terrible? Is that so wrong? From what I understand, what I am feeling is referred to as “broken.” The only problem with that is that it doesn’t matter how hard I try, the pieces will never fit back together correctly. A part of me wants to believe this is for the best, yet, I can’t help nut ask… Doesn’t it hurt? Doesn’t it sting? Don’t the memories of forgotten secret handshakes and broken promises ache? Don’t you ever get the creeping feeling that a piece of you is missing? Some will call it coincidence, others fate, but me… I call it pain. I call it betrayal. I call it losing a part of you that always seemed irreplaceable. I call it no more laughing in the middle of class at jokes that aren’t funny. I call it no more sign language that no one understands. I call it no more code names. I call it no more pinky promises. I call it loss. You see, people complain about losing a romantic soul-mate, but how about the soul-mate that is your maid-of-honor? Your best man? Nobody talks about losing them. Nobody talks about the emptiness that comes with it. The true loneliness of it. No one speaks of the racking sobs or the pains in their chests do they? The fact is, we never know what we have until we lose it. And so many of us think of that for love, but it’s more than that. It’s so much more. Especially when that person you forgot you had  turns around and chooses something, someone, somewhere, over you. It’s not easy. I don’t know that it ever has been, but perhaps that is the point. Perhaps the point is not to forgive and forget, but to love and treasure. 

Presenting the Great, Marvelous…

There’s this point in time where you just stop. Where the wind that’s rushing past you just keeps coming and it keeps moving and you just stand there. You just freeze. The air smells faintly of honeycomb. The grass beneath your feet is damp. Your hair is going everywhere. Your face starts to move and suddenly, you’re smiling. You’re laughing. You’re dancing. Suddenly, you can move again. Suddenly, every breath that you breathe is not just oxygen, is not just necessary, suddenly, every breath that you breathe, it’s like if you just needed one glass of water and this was it. Your heart is racing. It’s flying, it’s running, it’s chasing something. Something that you can’t see, but you know it’s there, and you’re just running. You’re running and you don’t know where to. And it hits you like an anvil on your chest. What am I running to? What am I running from? Suddenly, this weight it just gets heavier, its like you’re carrying the entire world with just your shoulders. Your tiny, tiny shoulders and you can’t bear it anymore and the world feels like its about to end and then — then it lifts. It lifts unexpectedly, unsurprisingly, and instantly, you expect someone, something, to come out of nowhere and just drop it on you all over again, but it doesn’t happen. The weight never drops. And so, you think about it, for a long while. You wonder and you ponder and you drive yourself crazy over it, until you get busy. Until you move on, and then instantly it’s like it never happened. It just disappears. It’s gone. You forget about it. You don’t even remember it happened. Then, you pass by a window sill of this little store in this little town. And you have no idea why, but there’s something pulling you, drawing you in, and you try to shake it off but you just can’t so you walk in, you glide in, and there it is. Sitting on display, as if it were a trophy, it’s your anvil. It’s the reason you couldn’t breathe. It’s the reason you were running. It’s everything you are, and everything you hoped to be. It’s something words cannot describe. Because this anvil that didn’t let you think, that didn’t let you sleep or eat or breathe… It was so much more than just an anvil. It was life and you just ran through it. You didn’t stop, you didn’t try, you just ignored it. You let life happen to you and you forgot to happen to life. I mean, think about this, you forgot to happen to life. So many of us do. So many of us forget to breathe the honeycomb, to smell the air, to breathe through the breathlessness. After you realize this, after the anvil hits you all over again, you feel something. Something that is like what you felt in the beginning, but so much better, and so different all at once. You don’t just feel the damp grass, you become it. You don’t just smell the honeycomb, you taste it. You don’t just stop you anymore, you stop everyone else too. But you don’t stop them in the normal way. You don’t stop them in the way that allows them to think. No, you stop them in the way where they just be. Where they just smile and laugh. Where they get to smirk and be breathless too. Where they get to see that the smell of honeycomb is just that sweet. You stop them in the way where they just happen to happen to life. You stop them in the way that everyone wishes to be stopped. Only then will it become obvious, life does not pass us by, time does not tick as fast as we believe it does, it is us that passes by life, it is us that ticks so relentlessly, it is us that forgets to help life live, instead of helping ourselves live life. 

The Home of the Brave and Land of the Free

“The unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion.” – John F. Kennedy

Many have doubted us. Many have looked upon us with scorn and thought us not only incapable, but invalid. They forgot who we were. Who we are. It seems that the past few years of disagreement and arguments have caused many to lose faith in us, but as I sit here in my window watching the fireworks erupt throughout the night sky I am reminded of a very important thing. We are all family here in America. We all salute the same flag. We all love in the same country. We all put our faith in the same land. Yes, we have grown. Yes, we have fought. Yes, we have torn one another down and hurt ourselves beyond belief and humanly comparison. But, we have also loved our neighbors. We have also stood up for peace. We have also fought for each other. We have also been brave and strong when it seemed we were weak and helpless. See that is the beautiful thing of this land. It does not matter how convoluted it may seem or become… At the end, it is the people within it that lead it to greatness. Whether it be a Hispanic old woman at a supermarket, or a young boy learning to rope a cow. We are all in the same America. We are all breathing the same air. And when we stand to sing that anthem and salute that flag we are one. We are not different races or religions. We are not different political parties or opinions. We are not Right or Left. We are family, we are hope, we are peace, we are happiness. We are the American Dream. Even if it’s a bit different than what it once was. For we are still the land of the free and the home of the brave. That will never change. That will never loop and erase. That fact is one we will proudly hold on to for the rest of our lives. So, here’s to you my beautiful America. May you thrive in this year and in many more to come.

This is me reminding you to stay idiosyncratic and make a change in the country we all adore so much.

Happy 4th of July everyone!🎆

I believe in the 21st century

Each person has a path. A purpose in this big old world. An answer to seek. A life worth searching for. And while we each have a path, We each have struggles. We each have aches and pains. We all think we understand. We all think that there is not much to be upset about. And yet, we find in the deepest confines of our souls something more than pain. We find strength and power, Smiles and joy, Love and happiness. We find that no matter how much pain, No matter how much darkness.. There will always be a light, Always another door at the end of a daunting hallway. There will always be hope. A fact that will never fade. Hope, as usual, though strong, hides in its façade of pain. It hides and it cowers, patiently in wait. Needing an answer to this unexplained terror. Because hope will never see How someone so strong, Could become so weak.

All in all, I believe hope to misunderstand us. I believe it to think us lost souls wandering the earth in search of purpose. But we are so much more. We are people of religion, people of patriotism and love. People that I believe are human, people that I believe are strong. People that I believe hope. People that I believe have loved and lost. People who have never loved at all. I believe in people having happily ever afters, I believe in people finding that prince charming. I believe in family and love. In happiness and joy.

I believe in us.

Happiness is more than just that…

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s learning to dance in the rain.” – Vivian Greene

There’s a lightness in your toes. It’s breathtaking. It feels as if you’ve jumped off a cloud. You’re falling, no wait, not falling, flying. You’re soaring. You smell honeycomb and freedom. Cinnamon and just a hint of mint. It’s not a place. It’s not a thing. It’s a feeling, a feeling of hope, of faith. It’s happiness.

There are a million and ten different reasons why a person could be happy. A million and ten different reasons why a person could choose to smile. But there will only be one reason for a person to have happiness. Happiness is this feeling. It’s almost warm and fuzzy on the outside. It’s comical and cowboy hats and country music and traveling and books and knowledge… Happiness is so much put together. Happiness is the sun shining through on a rainy day. Happiness is the calm before the storm. Happiness is feeling important. Happiness is loving. It’s annoying and sometimes, well, a lot of the times, hard to find. But when you find it… Everything comes together in a bittersweet mess. The fact is that happiness is memories on top of memories on top of more memories. Happiness is the truth we all see. In happiness we find that there are so many different meanings. So many different ways.

The truth is that happiness is more than any of us. In happiness you get this feeling in your toes and then a warmth that spreads and covers your heart, and you just close your eyes and you realize, I’m home. Happiness is this. It is being home. It is searching. It is waiting. It is laughing. Happiness is that stupid smile you can’t take off your face. Happiness is finding what’s going right instead of wrong. Happiness is knowing that not everything is perfect. Happiness is more than just words. Happiness is more than I could ever describe. In happiness there is beauty and a sense of wonder I can never fully describe.

The point is that happiness is so many different things. I mean, for me it’s pumpkins and Christmas and family. But it’s more than that too.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that, happiness is more than just that…

To the ones that we lost on the way…

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.” A quote by William Shakespeare that only comes close to how great you were. I love and miss you much.

In life there are so many chances to speak up, to grow up, to act up. These moments so small, so insignificant and minuscule; in the end those moments define who we are. Those moments, those minuscule, those insignificant, those small moments, in the end, they mean everything. Whether it’s a stranger greeting a lost soul, or a perfect motherly figure til times end. There are so many moments we are given, so many laughs and smiles. So many moments we take for granted, forever and ever. In life we have doors, and these moments are the keys. The pieces to a never-ending puzzle that fails to be understood. The words to a book in which you never looked. So much time we lost, so many times we missed. Frankly, it isn’t fair… Some things were never meant to be lost. Some roads were never meant to be paved. To be honest, I keep expecting to turn around and have more of those moments, keep expecting to turn around and have more time. I keep hearing what has been lost, and keep hoping it is just that. I keep seeing who you are, who you were, and who you will always be. I keep hoping this is a terribly bad dream, keep hoping that I’ll wake up sometime soon. I keep having this weight in my chest and it pains so to be unable to ask you where you are now and if you are okay. And yet, I keep thanking God each and every day, for although this was His will, and I don’t understand His way, He still gave me you. Because although this was His will, He still kept close to you.

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Being brave is knowing all the risks and still be willing to take them.

-Author of this blog