Monday, September 27, 2010
Reflection During My Commute
Recently, I have realized that my commute to work is one of my favorite times of day. Yeah, I know that may seem weird, but today provided me with a shining example of why I feel this way. In general, I enjoy my commute a lot because I have no choice but to sit there and relax. Ok, so relaxing is a choice over tensing up over traffic, etc. Anyhow, today I was listening to some nice tunes and just thinking about random things, and then, I saw the mountains in the distance. This reminded me of when I was in fourth grade. My teacher gave me and my classmates a great assignment. We were instructed to write a short story about one of our dreams in life and to draw a picture to go along with it. My dream that I wrote of was to live near the mountains. I drew big, gray mountains capped with snow. Then, I realized that since I moved away from my home city, I have fulfilled that dream. For 5 years, I got to see the Snowy Range of the Rocky Mountains, and now (on clear days), I get to see one of the most awe-inspiring peaks in North America: Mt. Rainier. I got a little grin on my face for a moment, as I realized that some of our dreams never die, and when we really have our heart set on something, are willing to take risks and work hard, sometimes, those dreams come true.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Great Parents Ready to Adopt!
Hey, everybody! My sister Anna and her husband Jeff are more than ready to adopt. If you know anyone who is considering placing a child for adoption, please refer them to http://ourgreatestwish.com/. On this site, you can learn more about them as a couple and as a family and contact them. Please pass the word along to as many people as you can. Anna and Jeff's desire to adopt could be just the miracle that a birth parent needs in their life right now.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Three Weeks From Today
I will be running the Rock'n'Roll Seattle Half Marathon. June 26, 2010 seems like it will mark something magnificent in my life. Is it my first half marathon? No. Is it the first half marathon I have run since I was diagnosed and treated for cancer? No. Has the training reminded me of why I love to run, what kind of person I am, what I do when the going gets tough, and have I learned invaluable lessons while training for it? The answer to all those is a quite resounding "Yes!"
Sometimes in my life I feel like I wax and wane with being in touch with myself. This may sound hoaky at first. Well, it may continue to sound hoaky, but what I mean is that sometimes I get so caught up with "life," as in bills to pay, what's in the news, what's on TV, daily worries, etc. that I simply let my sense of self decline to a point where one moment or day I simply feel like I need to "wake up." Then, I do all things I consider to be the steps to waking up: I assess what got me in that sleepy state, I consider why, and I try to move on and not do whatever it was that got me there again. Inevitably, though, I repeat some of the sleepy-state, self-neglecting behaviors. I think these behaviors are different for all of us, but I would venture to guess that nearly all of us have this struggle, this inner battle, to balance our daily lives with becoming closer to ourselves, getting to know our own souls, our spirits, and who we really are. I venture this guess because that is what our lives are all about: learning, growing, and becoming the best of ourselves that we can be.
Running is intertwined with self-realization for me. I never feel more alive than when the blood is pumping hard through my veins, I have to work for my next breath, and I'm feeling each stride take me farther than any average step could. Some may call this a "runner's high." I would have to argue just a bit about this. I rarely feel a great sense of euphoria while I am actually running. Often times, the aching, tired, sweaty feeling of accomplishment following the gasping, thirsty cool-down is the reward I feel. However, it is a powerful one. I would submit that feeling accomplished, however small or grand the accomplishment actually is, is the key to feeling empowered as a person. And feeling empowered, I truly believe, is the port of access to getting to know my soul, my spirit, myself.
Sometimes in my life I feel like I wax and wane with being in touch with myself. This may sound hoaky at first. Well, it may continue to sound hoaky, but what I mean is that sometimes I get so caught up with "life," as in bills to pay, what's in the news, what's on TV, daily worries, etc. that I simply let my sense of self decline to a point where one moment or day I simply feel like I need to "wake up." Then, I do all things I consider to be the steps to waking up: I assess what got me in that sleepy state, I consider why, and I try to move on and not do whatever it was that got me there again. Inevitably, though, I repeat some of the sleepy-state, self-neglecting behaviors. I think these behaviors are different for all of us, but I would venture to guess that nearly all of us have this struggle, this inner battle, to balance our daily lives with becoming closer to ourselves, getting to know our own souls, our spirits, and who we really are. I venture this guess because that is what our lives are all about: learning, growing, and becoming the best of ourselves that we can be.
Running is intertwined with self-realization for me. I never feel more alive than when the blood is pumping hard through my veins, I have to work for my next breath, and I'm feeling each stride take me farther than any average step could. Some may call this a "runner's high." I would have to argue just a bit about this. I rarely feel a great sense of euphoria while I am actually running. Often times, the aching, tired, sweaty feeling of accomplishment following the gasping, thirsty cool-down is the reward I feel. However, it is a powerful one. I would submit that feeling accomplished, however small or grand the accomplishment actually is, is the key to feeling empowered as a person. And feeling empowered, I truly believe, is the port of access to getting to know my soul, my spirit, myself.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Memories Of A Past Life
Has anyone ever had this feeling before? You are going about your day, a fairly mundane one at that. Then, something happens, something that would be pretty insignificant to anyone else, and a flood of memories washes over you.
This happened to me this afternoon. I was getting ready to do some chores. I was looking through some CD's to choose which one to pop in to make the chores a little less tedious. I came across an old CD of mine. It's really damaged for reasons I won't go into, so I haven't even tried to listen to it in ages. I put it in, and to my surprise, my favorite song on that CD skipped very little. Instead, I found myself standing there in front of the CD player with the mid-afternoon gray haze coming through the window shades, the melody singing straight to my heart. I stared for several seconds, suspended in time. I felt like each note was propelling me farther and farther into a past life: a younger life, a life that was so full of energy, pure hope, and a future that was joyously unsure. My eyes started to moisten, as I realized that the person living the life when I had last listened to this song and heard it the way I did just then, might as well have been a different person altogether. I realized this moment was full of emotion, and I didn't want it to pass. I wanted to let the feeling linger just a bit longer.
As the moment passed, I felt as though I was waking up from a dream, the best kind of dream: one that was in all actuality, real. I was then reminded of a line written by Thoreau, "Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake." What makes a dream a dream? To me, it's simply something you never want to end. It brings you unmeasurable amounts of joy. It is an all-encompassing feeling of peace and awe. So, if living is being in "dreams awake," I have not been living lately. Yes, of course, I get up each morning, I go through the motions of doing the things I have to do and know I should do, but I realized that I have not felt the truly mystical feeling of joy beating in my heart for some time.
Often times, I think our lives here on earth are somewhat really a series of lives. We go through vastly different stages, marked so completely distinctly from the ones before and after, that they could subjectively be called different lives. Though we do not literally die and become reborn over and over, certain things and events and feelings in our lives do. We move on and away from tragedy, uncertainty, loves, losses, and sometimes, happiness. I had been given this time-traveling experience as a gift. One of my past lives was surfacing to remind me of what true happiness feels like.
It is a human reality that we must constantly be working for happiness; it does not just fall into our laps. I know for sure, I have grown lazy at times toward cultivating the vast fields available to me that are lined, row upon row, with lavender and sunflower happiness. So, as jarring as the experience of a beautiful voice resonating in the simplicity of a Monday afternoon bringing me to a place that I felt had been neatly folded and tucked into the past may have been, it helped me realize, or maybe remember, that we don't have to put our happy moments in the past or the future. We live each moment now, do we not? Then why am I not living each one as though it's the best moment I've ever had? It is my resolve to do this as much as possible from here on out. Maybe someday, I'll see, hear, smell, feel something that reminds me of this period in my life, and I will be so overcome with joy, I will truly be glad to have chosen a path of harboring hope and the indescribable feeling that makes each of us eager to feel our feet hit the ground every morning.
This happened to me this afternoon. I was getting ready to do some chores. I was looking through some CD's to choose which one to pop in to make the chores a little less tedious. I came across an old CD of mine. It's really damaged for reasons I won't go into, so I haven't even tried to listen to it in ages. I put it in, and to my surprise, my favorite song on that CD skipped very little. Instead, I found myself standing there in front of the CD player with the mid-afternoon gray haze coming through the window shades, the melody singing straight to my heart. I stared for several seconds, suspended in time. I felt like each note was propelling me farther and farther into a past life: a younger life, a life that was so full of energy, pure hope, and a future that was joyously unsure. My eyes started to moisten, as I realized that the person living the life when I had last listened to this song and heard it the way I did just then, might as well have been a different person altogether. I realized this moment was full of emotion, and I didn't want it to pass. I wanted to let the feeling linger just a bit longer.
As the moment passed, I felt as though I was waking up from a dream, the best kind of dream: one that was in all actuality, real. I was then reminded of a line written by Thoreau, "Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake." What makes a dream a dream? To me, it's simply something you never want to end. It brings you unmeasurable amounts of joy. It is an all-encompassing feeling of peace and awe. So, if living is being in "dreams awake," I have not been living lately. Yes, of course, I get up each morning, I go through the motions of doing the things I have to do and know I should do, but I realized that I have not felt the truly mystical feeling of joy beating in my heart for some time.
Often times, I think our lives here on earth are somewhat really a series of lives. We go through vastly different stages, marked so completely distinctly from the ones before and after, that they could subjectively be called different lives. Though we do not literally die and become reborn over and over, certain things and events and feelings in our lives do. We move on and away from tragedy, uncertainty, loves, losses, and sometimes, happiness. I had been given this time-traveling experience as a gift. One of my past lives was surfacing to remind me of what true happiness feels like.
It is a human reality that we must constantly be working for happiness; it does not just fall into our laps. I know for sure, I have grown lazy at times toward cultivating the vast fields available to me that are lined, row upon row, with lavender and sunflower happiness. So, as jarring as the experience of a beautiful voice resonating in the simplicity of a Monday afternoon bringing me to a place that I felt had been neatly folded and tucked into the past may have been, it helped me realize, or maybe remember, that we don't have to put our happy moments in the past or the future. We live each moment now, do we not? Then why am I not living each one as though it's the best moment I've ever had? It is my resolve to do this as much as possible from here on out. Maybe someday, I'll see, hear, smell, feel something that reminds me of this period in my life, and I will be so overcome with joy, I will truly be glad to have chosen a path of harboring hope and the indescribable feeling that makes each of us eager to feel our feet hit the ground every morning.
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