allow yourself to be human

that feeling where you wish you could crawl into someone’s heart and them yours, and then emerge with complete love and understanding. 

Have you ever noticed some people are only funny when they’re making fun of other people?

It’s a shame that in the world we live many times does not allow you to be the person you want to be… Paraphrasing from Tal Ben Shahar, author of Happiness, in the answering of a question along the lines of “Concerning college students specifically, we want them not to be so stressed out…to get enough sleep, to be engaged in school…but is the environment of today fostering this type of behavior or the antithesis of this behavior?” Shahar answered something like this: IT IS A PROBLEM. He went on to describe that in his beginnings at Harvard, as a TA that mostly just reviewed student’s resumes, he was at first amazed and impressed at the enormous amount of volunteer work, job experience, honors, club participation, internships, etc that these students already had under their belts. He said, however, that he soon began to realize that the smaller font size necessary to cram ALL of these accomplishments onto one’s resume, in most cases, directly correlated with the smaller amount of leisure time, smaller amount of stress coping ability, smaller ability to really enjoy and focus on one singular activity and do it well. Conversely, it directly correlated with the increase in more multi-tasking, more doing things out of obligation and not because you believe in it, more becoming accustomed to being perpetually STRESSED OUT.  So what is today’s college student supposed to do? Take more leisure time, close the book at 11:00 pm and not finish that homework assignment in order to get a decent nights sleep and maybe be awake and absorptive in class the next day, stop volunteering at 5 different shelters and maybe devote him/herself to only one of them and actually “feel” something…make a “difference” there? Or, is he/she supposed to do what is seemingly “expected” and “necessary” to get anywhere in this world…and live a fantastically frantic and stressed out life. Tis the gigantic, over sized pickle of life i guess… Having just graduated with a mediocre resume at best, I guess one could venture to say that I succeeded? In all actuality, however, I didn’t hear this man speak until my last semester of college…soooo I was either ahead of my time, or just wasn’t too worried about what font I would be using and just how far I could extend those margins. The current dilemma seems to be being absolutely broke. I’m clearly not busy cramming my day with possible resume stuffers as I sit and leisurely sip on a cup of coffee, however, I feel like I am forced to be the person that is constantly worrying, stressing, about where my next dollar is going to come from. That is not how I want to live…i hate it! In my perfect world I would have just enough money for what I needed: food, bills, (I’m gonna have to work on my insatiable craving for cute clothes and jewelery), and just enough gas to see all of my friends…it seems, though, that every time I turn around I need money for this or that and as soon as that is done and paid for there is something else! Is it possible to be frugal and altruistic in today’s world? And then, whattaya know, right when I start feeling bad for myself, a good friend reminds me that so many other people…SO MANY…have it so much worse… I guess I’ll just suck it up and keep writing about my trivial complaints…on my MacBook Pro. Damn. Wake-up call.

What is the correct way to approach a situation where you think you might already know what the right decision is yet you can’t allow yourself to escape the feeling of “what if?” Deciphering between whether to follow the head or the heart is something, i must say, is not my strong suit.  I strongly believe that it is each person’s responsibility to protect his/her heart. It does not bode well for one’s emotional wellness to give too freely in matters of the heart. Directly contradicting this, however, is my belief to live each day as it is your last (or at least try to, I also advocate staying in bed all day with an amplitude of movies and junk food…maybe that makes me a hypocrite, or maybe that is making the best of the day if that’s what you have the hankering to do that day…who knows).  Anyways, this is a huge problem for me. I guess it is just life. Thre are hundreds of decisions we make everyday…actually, in a way, that is what we do all day every day is make decisions…and with each one of those decisions there is a consequence. We may have the best intentions when the decision is made, but we have no idea, absolutely no control over the outcome.  This is scary, if you ask me, but what is the other option? To not make any decisions? To not live your life? Ugh, that does not sound appetizing to me. I’ll pass, thank you. So…the only option is then to weight the options and, with a clean heart, make the decision that you feel most rings true to who you are. (I’m pretty sure at this point I’m referencing quasi scary/anxiety producing interpersonal situations and not whether you should have captain crunch or grape nuts for breakfast). So, when you’ve either decided to follow your heart or chose to be more analytical that day and everything comes crashing down and life sucks and you hate everyone (see “I Hate Everyone” by Get Set Go) what happens then? The conclusion that I’ve come to, whether just for self comfort or what I’n not sure, is to evaluate the situation and try your best to reconcile whatever wrongs you might have committed. I feel like we are all going to mess up, actually I know we will, and in those instances…yeah, I’ll go ahead and throw out the cliche “learn from your mistakes”…but beyond that I think it is rather simple.  Treat other people as you would want them to treat you. Be humble. Be empathetic. Realize that (again, messy interpersonal screw up reference here) the other person knows they made mistakes too and even if they aren’t as quick to admit it and apologize…be the example. Apologize and speak from your heart, whatever that may be. I guess that’s my conclusion on this matter. All you can do when something goes wrong is to admit your mistake, speak from your heart (apologize, agree to disagree, decide to still be friends, decide to part ways, etc), and see what the other person has to say. You can only control what comes out of your mouth and as long as you feel good about it, know that it came from a good place in your heart, and feel confident standing by what you said and your actions then that is absolutely all that you can do. It is then out of your hands. And to be quite honest, if you don’t receive something equally as considerate back…then that is a sign in itself. It is time to walk away from the situation and wish that person the best.  Maybe someday they’ll come around…

To live in the moment. What a fine line that is to walk.  How liberating it is to live life with reckless abandon and literally live each day as it is your last. To go tell that person you love them and take all your fears and preconceived notions of what “could be” or “what might happen” and how it “might fail” and just throw them out the window- in a sense, just be delightfully ignorant, and follow your heart. Man, that is one risque notion if you ask me. I wish it was that easy. I wish I could not think to the future and make my little pros and cons list in my head to talk myself out of all the risky things I should do today because there might not be a tomorrow for me to do it.  But. How is that even in the least bit responsible? Are we not supposed to be responsible for our future well-being? I mean, who else is to be held accountable for the decisions we make if not our self? This notion is, to me, the antagonist of the “live in the now” theme. No matter how much I just want to let go and jump into something I’m passionate about with the notion that if I don’t do it now I might not get another chance, I cannot escape the resounding sound of my inner-whatever telling me to think about how this rash decision could pan out in the future and its possible repercussions. And, of course, the possible outcomes that reveal themselves to me are all the ways this heartfelt, head-first decision can and will most likely fail. The human mind is such a complex thing. Is it even a “thing?” I don’t know.  I do know that it is honestly frightening the torment someone can put them self through simply by entertaining the different options there are for one situation, the different vantage points that can be taken, the different aspects that can be highlighted, the portions that can be conveniently left out in order to make it all just a bit “neater.”  Being human is truly exhausting. But at the same time I type that I know what an ungrateful thing that is to say. I am so blown away by the human mind’s infiniteness, and even though I quite frequently drive myself crazy with my analytical brain thinking up every possible possibility I, at the same time, am so amazed and so filled with faith that God will help me decipher when it is okay to leave the house with no umbrella with a 99% chance of rain, and when I should go ahead and bring that umbrella. Just in case.