Archive for November, 2006

Staying young…

November 4th, 2006 | Josie

The greatest poem ever known

Is one all poets have outgrown:

The poetry, innate, untold,

Of being only four years old.

~Christopher Morley, To a Child

I got a note yesterday from a friend that I have not talked to in quite a while, but with whom I share the best memories of my childhood. I don’t think that I can even begin to put into words the nostalgia that a couple of lines of text imparted on me. I was immediately drawn back to the days of popcicle kisses and playing tag, when a kiss or a hug made all of the hurts in the world go away. Back to when anything was possible and nothing in the world seemed bad or scary. 

It is sad that we spend so much time hurrying to grow up. I wish that children felt comfortable being children longer. I have spent my entire life yearning to grow up, to leave my childhood behind me, and now that I am “grown up,” I am clinging to the few left over strands of my childhood.I think that the key to being happy is not allowing yourself to be too grown up, to act a little silly and not care once in a while. It is dancing in my underwear in the dead of night, just because the mood strikes. It is playing dress up, with fancy dresses and too much makeup, just to feel beautiful for a little while. It is crying when there is something to cry about, even if the world deems it as silly or too small to bother. It is singing in the rain and not caring if I am off key. Quite basically, it is living.

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Growing up…

November 4th, 2006 | Josie

Spring and Fall by Gerard Manely Hopkins
Margaret, are you grieving
Over golden grove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! As the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for. 

Kind of a sad poem, but one of my favorites, because it is so true. When we are little we see only the small horrors of the world, like the dying leaves of fall, and we cry without shame. As we grow older, we see worse and worse things in this world, and yet we cry less and less. Growing up doesn’t have to mean deadening the soul, so why do we let it.

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Finally!

November 2nd, 2006 | Josie

“There are some days when I think I’m going to die from an overdose of happiness.”  ~Salvador Dali

 

 

I genuinely believe that the difference between a good day and a bad day is what you say to yourself when you first wake up. If the first thing you think in the morning is “Oh God, what shit does today have in store for me,” then of course it is going to be a shitty day. It is basically a self-fullfilling prophecy. The only problem with my theory is that things run in a circle too, meaning that if Monday sucked, I’ll probably be in a bad mood when I wake up on Tuesday, and therefore Tuesday is probably going to suck too. 

The thing is that you can’t let a bad yesterday bring down your today. I woke up this morning in just about the best mood I have had in a long long time, and it has made all of the difference. I feel and look better knowing that I am wearing a big smile on my face, rather than the unsightly scowl I have been sporting of late. It just goes to show that there really is a silver lining if you are patient enough to stick around and wait for it once in a while!

 

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Living on…

November 1st, 2006 | Josie

“I thought when love for you died, I should die.

It’s dead. Alone, most strangely, I live on.”

~Rupert Brooke

People always talk about falling in love, and how much it hurts to have your heart broken. People never seem to consider the fact that we fall out of love too, and that sometimes the heart is its own breaker. Loving someone and being in love with them are two entirely different things, and I wish that you could understand that. It wasn’t cold or decisive or meant to hurt. This hurts me too, more than I think that you can know. Relationships are like glass.  Sometimes it’s better to leave them broken than try to hurt yourself putting it back together.  ~Author Unknown

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Cruel, unusual…

November 1st, 2006 | Josie

Sometimes when I’m angry I have the right to be angry, but that doesn’t give me the right to be cruel.  ~Author Unknown

I think that I should keep this in mind more often. I had several reasons to be angry last night, all of them very real and valid and not at all silly. But that really didn’t give me the right to be a bitch. In the end, I’m the one that came out looking like an idiot and not the other way around. I found an interesting quote from Malachy McCourt that seems to fit well: “Resentment is like taking poison and then waiting for the other person to die.” It just wells up inside of you, making you feel like shit all of the time, and in the end you are the only one that is hurting, not the person that mades you angry in the first place.I need to accept that sometimes I have every right to be pissed at someone for something that they did or did not do, for treating me like shit, or worse, for treating me like I am invisible. I don’t have to lay down and let people walk on me, but on the same note I can’t treat other people awful just because they did me first. Ignoring someone who has hurt you without telling them exactly what it was that they did wrong makes you look like the bad guy, not them. Its like getting upset and kicking a rock. The rock sits there, undamaged, and you are left the one with a sore foot.

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Stressing out…

November 1st, 2006 | Josie

“I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.” ~Jennifer Yane

I really do try to stop and smell the roses, taking time to enjoy life around me. I take long showers whenever I can, sit in the sun and read or think or do really nothing at all. No matter what I do, however, I can’t seem to relax. Everytime I take time off of what I am doing, I realize that there are 4 million more things that I haven’t done yet, and I start to stress.The biggest problem with me I think is that I am a huge procrastinator, so even when I have set aside the time to relax, I feel like I am just procrastinating again. It’s a vicious circle: I stress, so I have to relax, and then I stress out again because I relaxed.  Definately one of the more frustrating problems of life.

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