Things come together...things fall apart.

It's almost incredible how we change as people each year, and how the world around us changes. The world is a water color painting, though sometimes the colors blur. There are moments when we are strong as the trees that provide a green tinge to our worldly backdrop. At other moments, we are far more fragile. Everything we experience shapes us. It's one of the wonders of being human, I suppose - that astounding capacity for resilience that gets us along the bumps and curves that make up the paths of our lives. Well, I suppose it would be rude it ignore the fact that yes, all creatures, big and small, have learned to adapt. But as I've never had the pleasure to live a day as a frog or a falcon, I can only vouche for what it's like to be a person. And more specifically, a teenage person.

Life is often a precarious balancing act. We have to juggle work and play, and deal with the curve balls that life throws us. Curve balls often as sharp as glass. Nothing in life is a guarentee. Though I have much more to experience, I've had my fair share of coping - when a relative passed away, when my plans didn't work out...you get the picture. There are moments when you feel as though your world is a enigmatic puzzle, and you're scrambling to make the pieces fit together. In other moments (of greater clarity) you can see the big picture. Rarely will your world end. There may be moments when you're blinded by the darkness of despair, but in these moments, it's best to be illuminated by remembrance of those fragments of time, however few and far between they may be, when all is right, calm, and peaceful.

Today's Musings...

At my school, there are several boxes like the one above scattered throughout the building. A box? What could be so extraordinary about a plain ol' cardboard box, you ask? Each of these boxes has a purpose: to be utilized as a drop-off spot for items to be donated to soldiers serving in the Middle East. Now, dropping off items like travel-sized deodorant and white t-shirts may not appear to be the most important difference a person could make in the world, but amenities from the States bring a bit of comfort to desert-locked soldiers.

As you can imagine, it's quite easy to find the items for this service project - take a trip to Target or a local drug store. However, many high schoolers have far more important things to worry about than donating toiletries to the brave men and women serving our nation, like whether or not their boyfriends or girlfriends still love them.

Out of curiosity, I peeked into one of the boxes. Not to my surprise, the box contained some trash and a few quarters. It was a little sickening. Those students might think, sarcastically, "Here's my lunch money...and my empty French fry container too." What will the quarters buy? A stick of gum?

I may be hypocritical, as I have yet to make a donation, but never would I even have an inkling of the notion to dump my trash and a few spare coins into a box meant to be a medium through which to commit an act of kindness and charity. It's a disgrace.

Shopping Spree and Spring Fever

Over the weekend, I was out shopping for some necessities for my summer pre-college program...like bedding! I discovered this Steve Madden find at Home Goods (well, just the quilt). I would much rather be shopping for my summer dorm than studying, let's say Chemistry. Oh, spring fever, why must you be so incessant?

As it becomes nicer out, and the scents and bright colors of flowers are everywhere you go,  it's definitely hard to focus on the doldrums we shall call homework/work. However, even if you'd rather be frolicking through a field of flowers, you can't let your responsibilities shift to the back burner. Without focus, we let too much fun find its way into our lives. Work is important, even if it's the thing you least want to be doing. Especially in high school. At the moment you may not be fretting over the college admissions process, but remember: completing your work and trying you absolute best in school will immensely help you in the long run. The flowers will still be there when you are finally done writing your research paper.

Penguin Cloth-bound Classics...among some of the neat items that Anthropologie sells. These are the children's editions, such as Peter Pan and Anne of Green Gables. I adore the colors!

These books are also a throwback to the simplistic days of childhood, where adventure truly seemed to be just a page-turn away. As we grow older, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that books will always be an escape if we let ourselves be swept away by the whimsy of a far-fetched tale. Life can be pretty dull if we don't exercise our imaginations in a while. Sometimes, they just need a good stretch. If you're feeling really down in the dumps, why not pick up a book you loved as a child? Not only can reality be exhausting; it can be just plain boring. Not to mention that actual trips to far-off places are quite pricey in today's economy. You may not be able to afford to visit an actual castle, but you sure have the freedom to read about one.

A wonderful book quote!

"We never return to the same book or even to the same pages, because in varying light we change and the book changes and memories grow bright and dim and bright again and we never know what exactly it is we learn or forget or what it is we remember."

- Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading 

Change is inevitable. Even Holden Caulfield comes to realize this. As this quote illustrates, our propensity to be shaped by the world around us constantly affects our perception. Humans - we're curious creatures. We're always on the lookout for something new to satiate our hunger for knowledge, knowledge about the world, and about ourselves. Yet, the sources that exist to help us make sense of this crazy world change just as much as we do. The answers are no more clear than the questions, ever shifting, like the colors in a kaleidoscope. On different days, in different moments, what we see and what we seek are altered. 

Let's Start with a Favorite Quote: A universal truth, I find.

"The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves—say rather, loved in spite of ourselves"

 

- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

 

There are always those moments when we stop and take a deep breath, as if for the first time, moments that exist between the stress of the daily grind and sweet solace of deep slumber. These are the moments one might call "thinking" time or "me" time. We examine ourselves and our lives. Teenagers, adults, even kids take the time to do these individual evaluations. We take a sort of mental inventory of what is going on in the world around us and in our own personal worlds. These are the seconds, minutes, hours, in which we question, whether consciously or subconsciously, who we are, what we're doing, where we're headed. It is in human nature to dwell on the inter-connectivity, or lack-there-of that we experience as people. We all want to be loved. A child may feel the absence of love if his parents are on the verge of divorce, he has a new baby sister, etc. Someone older and in a relationship may evaluate that things just aren't working out. There are countless other examples

For all of the self-help books that exist, an over-arching goal is being able to find happiness in life. Personal happiness. However, a main source of happiness, as Hugo so astutely pointed out, is love. And without love, finding happiness is often not so simple. Sure, it may be a combination of teenage delusion and the media that makes adolescents feel as though they won't be happy if they don't have a boyfriend/girlfriend, but in many cases, knowing that we are loved or are capable of being loved is enough to turn that perpetual, proverbial frown upside-down. More than just being loved for ourselves, we often find that our deepest, if unspoken, desire is to be wholeheartedly loved, flaws and all.