Camping

This weekend I went camping, well Saturday into Sunday.  It was so much fun and I really enjoyed the time with my friends.  But while we were there I got the chance to take in nature at its finest and listen to what it had to tell me the way Emerson and Thoreau talked about in their works.  It was so peaceful where we were and I couldn’t help but feel at peace with how things are in my life right now.  Sure I am struggling with a few things, but all the good things outweigh anything bad.  Life is never going to be completely and totally perfect so we can’t expect it to be.  We need to accept it and focus on the good things in our lives like awesome friends and family.

I found myself just sitting there watching my friends and boyfriend interact with each other.  Or watching the fire-light dance, the water running over the rocks, hearing animals playing in the water at night.  Everything about this weekend has been peaceful and I feel rejuvenated from it.  Im ready to take on the week and tackle any issue that may arise.  Im happy with letting doors close and seeing what else life has more me.  Life is going to throw me hardballs, and make things alittle difficult but that is the point in life right?  The real world?  Everything isn’t going to be ponies and candy (though Tom’s diet when he gets old is going to consist of candy) its going to be tough and we are going to have to struggle through things and find ways to work through it all.  We need to find that peace within, that peace that nature has.  Camping this weekend helped me a lot, maybe I should do it more often.

Choosing

There is a quote in Broken Open that I found interesting and made me stop reading for a little bit.  This book has the habit of doing that and I like it even though its making me take forever to read it, but I digress.  The quote says: God or Spirit or Creator or insert name here, wants us to go down into the dark waters, but also wants us to come up to the light…We can choose darkness, fear, addiction, and despair.  We can choose light, hope, meaning and joy.

Sometimes we do choose the fear, addiction and despair without realizing it.  We think we are getting away from our problems by hiding them or hiding from them.  I think too often we expect things to tide over and just be done with and we will be okay.  We never think that it is our decision that brings out of that pit of despair.  We are the ones who make the difference in our own lives, we are the ones who begin to build back from struggles, strife, and all kinds of hardships that life throws at us.  We tend to find things that help us through those times of tribulation.  For example I use writing and photography to choose light and hope.

Sometimes we need to go through those times of darkness and despair, but we go through them because they help us see what we need to do to find the light.  We are made to make the choice, to choose what we want for our lives and a lot of the time we make the choice to struggle and be well miserable.  We are too engulfed in our pain that we don’t see the doors that open into the light, hope and meaning.  Sure I know in life I am going to struggle with things, but now I am making the choice to fight through it and get across the dark waters to the shores of light and happiness.

Opened Door

Yesterday I had one of the greatest times I have had in a long time.  I spent the day with a very special, wonderful man.  We spent the day at the zoo, then a movie and to top it off a beautiful, romantic view of the city.  Everyone tends to go to the look out points, but we went somewhere different and the view was breath-taking.

The book I am reading mentioned something about open doors and how most of the time we don’t notice the doors open to us because we pay too much attention to the closed ones.  We try to open them, bust them down, break them open that we don’t see the door right next to it wide open.  I have decided to let doors close in my life and accept that those doors have been closed.  Because well when one doors closes another one opens right?  But I accepted that some doors have been closed; while some not completely (like not losing someone all together but becoming great friends).  I took the chance on a door that has been open and had probably one of the best dates in a long time.

The door has been opened to something that could be wonderful…well is wonderful already.  I know we will be spending more time together.  Everything yesterday was perfect, even when we weren’t talking it was perfect, well aside from all the animals being asleep except like the polar bear.  But I’m excited for paying attention to the open door in front of me.  More later….

The Real Me

I am still reading Broken Open; I know its taking me a while to read, longer than most books, but I’ve been taking my time and really letting some of what the author says really sink in.  I read something today that actually made me stop and think.  It was a quote from Ram Dass “Nothing more to lose. Ego breaks open – then you see who you really are.”

We all can admit that there are things that happen in life that just shatter our ego, possibly a part of the phoenix process I mentioned in a post last week.  It breaks us down until we see who the real us are.  What makes us tick; what the core of who we are..who we really are.  Not who we want to be, or even who we THINK we are, or even who we portray to other people.  The trials we go through break us down and force us to take a look at ourselves and I think a lot of have a hard time with trials because we have a hard time taking that good hard look at ourselves.  We don’t want to admit that we were broken down by something even if it was something out of control.

Sometimes, maybe we need to lose it all to see what really matters to us.  To see things we’ve never noticed before in our lives.  When we lose it all…maybe we will learn to appreciate what we have more.  But what we need to admit and come to terms with before we see those things is sometimes we need to relearn who we are.  Find out who the real me is behind the masks we put on in everyday life; behind all the roles we play daily.  Im starting to ask myself that now…who am I?

Weekly Thanks

There are times when I keep missing the weekly thanks and thats a bummer. But I am trying to get back into giving thanks on a weekly basis for a variety of things.

People who mean the world to me

A good job and seeing it make a difference

The innocence of children: the things they say, the imagination they have, just children in general

Getting the chance to snap a great picture of nature, friends, and family

The softness of m cat and the cuteness of her meow

A friend that I could never live without

Regaining my confidence

My brother

There are so many different things to be thankful for and just a simple weekly thanks doesn’t seem to be able to justify them all or begin to say how thankful I am to have things in my life, or even people in my life.

Acceptance

This post is an acceptance of one of the struggles in my life.  The end of last month a tragedy happened to me; well a crime was committed against me. I’m not going into details about what happened because honestly…I don’t think I can at this point.  Someday I will be.

I have alot of the things that I need to do; should do to help myself through the process of healing.  There are some of those things, that I just cannot do.  Things I almost did, but chickened out of; changed my mind on because I don’t think I can handle it.  I know it makes me look weak because I cannot bring myself to go through with something I planned on doing.  I know my not going through with it also hurts some of the people in my life and that in itself hurts me.  But like I said I cannot bring myself to do.  Just the thought of it scares me and makes me want to cry.

Sometimes in life when we are faced with decisions to make we need to think of our own well-being, it may be selfish, it may be weak, but sometimes we do need to think of ourselves.  I don’t think I would be able to remain intact through it; I would just break, whatever thread that is holding me together would come apart.  Ive done a lot of things I didn’t really want to do, but knew I needed to do, and this one thing…I just cannot bring myself to do…and it makes me feel weak.

No matter what we go through in life, knowing we have people that care is what makes a difference and while some of the people in my life don’t know the full extent of what happened, they support me and that means the world to me.  Having someone there to talk to when I need it, or someone there to allow me to be weird, or even to threaten to leave me in the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese.  While going through this, having my best guy friend there for me is what has helped me through this.  I  know what happened, while it happened to me, has hurt him too…so has my decision and I cannot explain  it.  And I don’t know what to do to help.  I know the whole thing is hard for everyone, but really…I have to do what is right for me.  .

Phoenix Process

We have all heard the myths about the phoenix, if not its a legend of a bird: the phoenix who every 500 years or so bursts into flames and dies, only to rise again from the ashes.  The bird becomes a reflection on the bird it once was a the bird it will become.   I think from time to time we need to go through a similar process.  We need to renew ourselves from shattered pieces, from the ashes of a difficult time.  I think sometimes we need to struggle and when we are forced to look at things in our lives and realize we need to accept certain situations.

It is in the darkest moments that we see the light.  Sometimes its in the darkest hours when we think everything is lost that we begin to see things clearer and begin to change ourselves.  We gain a new perspective one things and see not just our situations, but also the world in a new point of view.  We will always find things we need through the process.  We get to the points of burning to ashes in order to see some of these things, to learn more not about the world around, but about ourselves.

We are like the phoenix, we go through moments of transformations, of almost as if we die and become a new person.  A lot of the time we don’t see it as a process of becoming something new WHILE we go through the process but afterwards, when we look back on things we may see how we have changed.  I know looking back on my past, I have seen changes, I have seen how I as a person have changed and my outlook on life has changed.  Almost everything we live through is part of the phoenix process.  Everything we decide and do is a part of the process of becoming something new, something stronger.

Emotional Intelligence

So I was reading my book today and read something else that kind of made sense.  The author said something about relying too much on our brains to “carry the full weight” of life.  But when it comes down to it we need to allow our hearts to take over sometime.  For some reason we don’t allow our hearts to speak, we don’t listen to our hearts as much as we want, or should.  Elizabeth Lesser (the author) made an interesting point.  She said maybe it was because we live in a society that stresses intellectual understanding rather than emotional intelligence. 

Too often we think or emotions and feelings are untrustworthy and we cannot experience reality if we listen or rely on our emotions and feelings.  ITs almost as if we really don’t allow ourselves to feel, but to think about the solution to our troubles.  I think we feel more stress and struggle more because we don’t let ourselves actually feel.  What if…maybe…some of the hardships and struggles we go through don’t have a solution other than to feel.  To experience the pain and heartache?  Maybe we NEED to feel.  Maybe we need to experience the feelings and emotions that go along with going through the pains of life.

While some people think emotions and feelings are untrustworthy and we can’t rely on them that much; I think sometimes we need to rely on our emotions to experience life.  What is life if you don’t experience the emotions and feelings that go with it?  Why do we have to try and hide how we feel and the emotions that sometimes rage inside us?

Letting Go

I am having a conversation with one of my good friends about letting go of people we care about and love.  While we love these people dearly; we know we need to let them go and do what they need to do. What we both are realizing is that we are accepting the situations that we have like the book Broken Open talks about; new doors are opening.  Things are slightly changing.  We are accepting that one door might be closing on us and instead of trying to wedge our feet in to keep it open….something else presents itself.

I think a lot of time we are all stuck trying to hold onto the past whether it is a person we love, a job we gave up, an opportunity we let pass us by or whatever we try to hold on to it.  Hold onto some of our failures; I know I’m guilty of that.  We are constantly looking back instead of looking forward.  We want to keep trying to either wedge our feet into the door close or bust down the door that has already been close.  When we do that we don’t notice all the doors that are being open to us.  Why do we do that?  Why can’t we let things go and try to break through the closed doors.  Why can’t we just let go and accept the way things are?  Especially if it hurts so bad.

I have decided to just realize that when I accept things for the way they are and not try to hold onto the things I need to let go, i will see the doors more clearly and maybe…just  maybe be a little bit happier.

Open Doors

I am reading this book called Broken Open and there are so many things that it says that is making sense to me and I think I am going to try.  The chapter I read today had a quote at the beginning that is sticking with me and making me think.  It is from a  poet named Rumi.  It says: The moment you accept what troubles you've been given, the door will open.

Sometimes we don’t want to accept our troubles and kind of deny that we are going through anything.  We are human, we will constantly be dealing with some sort of hardship no matter what it is.  Yet for some unknown reason we cannot accept that we go through things.  Whenever someone asks how are things going or how do  you like your new job; we never answer what is on our minds.  We never say things just aren’t going right.  We never say that there is a struggle in our lives.  Why not?  Why can’t we admit that we are hurting?

Rumi says that once we accept our troubles doors will be open. We tend to pound at that door, trying to make it open but its like pad-locked.  We need to accept the fact that we will go through troubles and tribulations.  We need to share not only our accomplishments and satisfaction, but also our sorrows and failures.  There is nothing wrong in admitting that sometimes things aren’t always sunshine and rainbows.  Because seriously when is it really all sunshine and rainbows?