Can we please talk about how unbelievably beautiful it is today?
I had some thoughts on things, but the sun whisked them away.
Actually, though, I did want to talk a little bit about how weird weather is. At any given point during the day, all around the world, it is probably snowing, raining, sunny, hurricane-ing, tornado-ing, and some volcano (particularly those underwater) is probably erupting...all at the same time. And when people first decided to try and predict the weather before there were devices that could? Someone actually decided that they would find a way to predict that shit.
People literally used to think that the elements were a result of whatever the gods were feeling. Now we know they're scientific phenomena.
Where are we going to be in fifty years? What are we going to understand then that we don't now?
Maybe our understanding or belief in religion now is going to completely morph. The funny thing is that throughout the ages, though religion changes, it is still persistent in the human tradition.
Apparently, we all need something to believe. There is always something that we can't really explain. There's always a need to have an explanation, no matter how far-fetched, because sometimes not having the answers just isn't good enough.
What I think? People just need to accept that there are some things we will never understand. Life is a bit of a mystery. And if we understood everything? Imagine a world where we had all the answers.
There's really nothing like having an extremely stressful yet productive day, getting tons of things done, turning in a twenty-five page marketing plan, walking all over campus, filling out hiring paperwork, putting together budgets, making a powerpoint presentation, running back and forth between class and the store, filing your taxes, hitting the books for a few hours (all of this done running on three hours of sleep and a double espresso)...
and then coming home, heating up a mini strawberry pie, dolloping on some ice cream, finding the perfect patch of warm sun on the carpet in your room and lounging out, unwinding, and wasting a good hour or two doing absolutely nothing.
Life is complicated, and things are complicated, and I get that. But the past month has been the happiest of my life. In spite of everything, in spite of some of the huge obstacles that are staring me down, I am walking tall. I am perfectly, incandescently, unbelievably...content isn't the right word, because I'm past contentment. I have beautiful, wonderful, hilarious and amazing people in my life. Some old, some new...some who I thought I had lost, but we found our way back to each other. I couldn't ask for more than that.
I feel like I'm blossoming.
This is one of those rare, perfect, beautiful times in your life where you just have to lift up your hands, take a deep breath, close your eyes, and take it all in. Trap it in amber, wrap it up and keep it in your heart to light the way when darkness comes.
“You've changed so much. I guess that's what happens. I wish you knew how much you changed me. I wonder if I changed you, if your life is different because of me. Because mine's different. My God, you taught me so much, and now we don't even talk to each other. I guess that's what happens.”
I keep saying it, but I have to again - I have been so terrible about writing here. I promise promise promise I will make it up to you.
Because guess what guess what guess what!?! I have excellent news!
This is where I will be come July.
Pretty, right?
So that means something like what I did last summer will happen, where I will be traveling and writing, my two favorite favorite things, meaning that you can actually expect reasonable updates on my life as opposed to this sad, pathetic excuse for journaling that I've been keeping up lately.
But really, what I wanted to talk about today was people. I know this is a broad topic of discussion but I just met someone who has given me a great deal of faith in a number of my theories. I'm going to abandon lofty language and get down to the simple stuff, so bear with me.
For a lot of people, faith is based off of some teaching, or some experience, or some theory...or, well, something.
For me, my faith is based on people.
Sometimes you meet people and you feel like you've known them forever. You feel something resounding between you that is the same, and there's some sort of common note that is struck between the two of you. This has happened to me at chance points in my life with certain specific people, and every time it does it almost makes me do a double take, makes me stop short.
Not to say that I don't have things in common with other people, but sometimes you'll run across a person where there's just that something - that something that you just can't pinpoint. You just feel like you're cut from the same cloth. It's almost too eerie of a coincidence that you met this person for it to really be coincidence, you know?
I think life and the universe are just one giant coincidence, but within that coincidence and chaos there is somehow some sort of order that is created. Kind of like how fractals always end up having a pattern. Somehow, things end up uniquely falling together into a beautiful order that looks like it was preordained and makes a hell of a lot of sense.
Read Chaos. It'll change your views on pretty much everything.
Anyways, it's moments and times like these, when I meet someone like this, that my faith is restored. If I am ever losing faith, I just turn to these people and I remember.
Now, as in other times in my life, certain things are going on around me that are making me question people. People do some truly horrible things. People lie, people steal, people try to hurt others on purpose.
I think that all of these horrible things that people do come from lack of trust. Trust is the root of the problem. This trust problem has two sides to it. People are this way when they do not trust others, but also when they do not trust themselves.
It is difficult to trust others and even, sometimes to trust in yourself. It takes a leap of faith, and courage that some do not have. Even if you have it all together, once you put your trust in someone, things are out of your hands. And trusting yourself to make a good decision or end up in the right place, to be okay, is often difficult too.
I'm being vague, and I get the feeling that this was one of those things that made better sense in my head, so I'll digress. Basically, sometimes I think it's safe to say that if people had a little faith, particularly in each other, things would be different.
In spite of everything, I really do believe that people are beautiful, life is beautiful, and just being alive on a shimmery sunny day or being able to stare into the eyes of another living, breathing, thinking being is beautiful. Being alive is taking a chance, taking a swing at things. Don't take a single moment for granted.
Today as I was walking home, I noticed (rather startled-ly) a bird nestled in a flower by my foot. I scared it away as I walked by, but it hesitated a moment before it flew away and looked at me.
Normally this isn’t weird for me, but it looked me right in the eye. Almost piercingly. There was almost a feeling there. An emotion.
I really hope this isn’t the first sign of me going crazy.
I think I already kind of am, though. Perhaps it’s just a step in the right direction.
I then took a better look at the tiny flowers, growing in that shitty grainy soil outside of the Extension buildings. They turn their little faces towards the sun beseechingly, so vibrant and full of color next to the concrete and the prickly cottony bushes.
Flowers are hopeful. When you give a flower to someone, it’s a sign of hope. They open their faces towards the light with an ineffable sort of purity.
Can two people be meant for each other? I have two friends who recently split, and I’ve been watching them both closely. Some moments when I’m with either of them, or talking to either of them, my heart just sinks, because I really do feel like they belong together. There’s just too much water under the bridge. It all got to be too much to take.
It sucks.
I honestly do think that some people are meant for one another. In another world, it might have worked out. Sometimes it’s just not meant to be, though.
I’ve gotten really okay with saying ‘I don’t know’, in so many realms of my life. I’m not giving up the search, and part of me will always be anxious, restless, questing for the answers. I’ve become a little more okay with things not being all worked out.
The big problem is dealing with the people who aren’t okay with it, and not letting them break my stride. I’ve come to realize that all of my self-doubt comes from the people around me. I have a hell of a lot of faith in myself, and I honestly do believe that no matter what, everything will turn out fine.
My mother has this theory—it sort of is passed down in Indian culture, but it doesn’t really have a name as far as I know. I’ll call it the clay pot theory. The theory is that you have a clay pot full of your “life-spirit,” we’ll call it, deep inside of you. This life spirit is called your “atman”. Through your trials and tribulations, and especially your heartbreaks, your clay pot of atman can crack. Though you may feel broken, it is at these times in your life that your life spirit flows out, and you can see who you truly are inside.
It’s like they always say in the movies: you find out what kind of person someone really is when they have a gun pointed to their head.
The theory continues: the more your life spirit flows, the more you crack, the more likely your spirit is to flow out at other times in your life. Though you may be broken, you also manage to become more open, open to the universe and to so many other influences in your life. Breaking you also makes you, in a way.
It’s kind of sad that the forces around me are the ones taking me down, but it’s also nice to know that inside, somewhere, buried deep, I have a source of strength. I am so strong. We are all so strong. Even in our weakest moments, we are strong.
I have some weird sort of sense of faith. I have always been a spiritual person, I just haven’t found a banner to put it under yet. It’s not so much faith in a higher power as it is faith in people, and faith in myself.
Faith in something.
Luck has been on my side so far in this life. Sometimes it abandons me, but I really do think that there is no such thing as coincidence. It all works out in the end. If it doesn’t, it’s not the end.
