All Good Things

My mom and I have a joke that I inherited all of the negative qualities from both of my parents.   My mom’s teeth, my dad’s feet, and so on, and so forth.   Sometimes, I imagine, it can feel that way to most of us.   As we grow, we begin to see reflections of the people who raised us when we look in the mirror, and for some of us that can be scary.   As children of parents, we have front-row seats to some high highs and some low lows.   Though I cannot speak from experience, what I know of parenting is that it is hard.   I was recently talking with a friend, and we came to the conclusion that it’s probably impossible to bring a childhood all the way to adulthood without leaving it with some amount of trauma (not that we don't try).   It can be frightening to see ourselves grow toward some of the ends that resulted in who we are.   It’s a cycle that makes more sense than any of us care to admit, and the realization of which can leave us winded...

Since I was pretty young (relative, of course, to my current youth), I’ve swung back and forth between two extremes in terms of my beliefs about the nature of existence. Call it a hobby, or something akin to one.  Both extreme notions can be summarized in simple statements: “everything is temporary,” and “everything is permanent.”  The former seems to hold dominance in times when I feel the most ill at ease.   It is when I am insecure and afraid and sad that I think to myself that everything fades eventually, and one day it will be me that fades: completely temporary.   The latter, as you may infer, predominates when I feel the most consistent joy.   When things seem to be going right, when I feel the most supported and loved, I am thrilled to feel as though those moments live on forever, inside of me, etched on some cosmic record somewhere: infinite and permanent. Today, in my Indian Religion and Philosophy class, my professor read from The Elegant Uni...

Adaptability.   If you are at all familiar with the Clifton StrengthsFinder system, then you may know that Adaptability is one of the themes that Gallup includes under its “Relationship Building” category.   If you are at all familiar with me, you will probably be surprised to learn that when I took the Strengths Assessment in the fall of 2017, Adaptability was ranked within my top five themes from a list of 34.   Had I guessed, I would never have thought that I would be called adaptable, in any setting, for any reason.   One of my mom’s favorite things to tease me about is my attachment to lists and schedules.   If you say that we’re eating dinner at a certain time, I’ll expect to be eating dinner at that time.   Monday is my favorite day of the week, because it’s the day that everything starts over, and I have a schedule to follow again.   I prize routine.   I like my life boring.   Though I love the sun (lol standsforthesun.blogsp...

Hello.   I hope, if you’re reading this, these words are finding you well.   As I sit in my kitchen writing this, it is January 2, 2019.   January 2nd, 2019 marks the end of the holiday season.   Today is the day that everyone goes back to work, back to school, back to normal.   Everything deflates rather quickly starting today, especially after all of the   merriment and celebration in December.   We spend the last days of December with a champagne flute in hand, celebrating all of what has happened in the last twelve months and swearing to do better in the next twelve.   We spend the light of the first day of the year recovering from all of our celebration, and vowing that our promises were legitimate, and that we will follow through on them.   And then it’s over, and it’s overcast, and alarms go off before the sun rises, and it is time to get back to life.   I brought in 2019 in a beautiful way.   I was surrounded by...