A few good words

"The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache."
-Marjorie Pay Hinckley

"The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes to do, but in liking what one has to do."
-Richard L. Evans

"People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway. What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway. Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway. In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."
-Mother Theresa

I love that last one. happiness is a choice and some of the happiest people I know, have some of the toughest problems, but they've found a way to see the good through it all.

"The most terrible battles leave some places untouched, protected, despite being surrounded by fire."

How perfectly convenient that, yesterday, as I was waiting for the timer on the chocolate chip cookies to go off, I curled up in an armchair in our parlor* to get sucked into the first part of Suite Francaise, "Storm in June," while outside drops of rain as big as marbles fell all along the ground, and thunder shook the walls of this antique house.

My parents gave me this book for Christmas and I am finally getting around to reading it. It was actually the bit on the back of the book about the author, not the plot synopsis that caught my interest originally:

"When Irene Nemirovsky began working on Suite Francaise, she was already a highly successful writer living in Paris. But she was also a Jew, and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where she died. For sixty-four years, this novel remained hidden and unknown."

I really like the book so far. I am always so inspired by stories of ordinary people and the things that happen to them.

This part especially struck me:

"In all her life the woman had probably never said anything but ordinary things, like 'the leeks are getting bigger' or 'who's the dirty pig who got my floor all muddy?'...What are we in people's eyes, Maurice and I, other than two miserable employees? It's true in a way, but in another way, we are precious and unique. I know that too...All they could do was to keep walking and place themselves in the hands of God."

image via this

*so named by my landlords.

praise His name forever

"Rejoice evermore.
Pray without ceasing.
In every thing give thanks:
for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you."

1 Thessalonians 5: 16-18

I love this message.
We have so many reasons to rejoice.

Today I am rejoicing because of mornings that don't begin at 6:30am, catching up with old friends, and time to eat dinner at the dinner table.

Why are you rejoicing?

one fine day, you're gonna want me for your girl

Jack: Maybe you should let somebody help you out every once in a while.

Melanie: Definitely not. I've got all of these little balls up in the air. And if somebody else caught one for me, I'd drop them all.

-One Fine Day

Today I feel like I'm barely keeping all the little balls from crashing to the ground.

And I wish I knew how or who to ask for help.

I need a mental health day.

Or a good old fashioned Saturday.

A day to curl up in many many blankets (because our heat is not working right now), make a huge mug of hot cocoa, and watch a silly movie that will make me cry and laugh in the same hour and a half.*

*As my friend Clark pointed out, 90s chick flicks are the best. I agree. Am I old enough to say things like, "they just don't make them like they used to.."?

**On another note, I liked One Fine Day so much that I taped it when it was on TV and still have an old, worn out VHS copy with commercials. Maybe the plot is incredibly unrealistic, but I don't even care. Maybe it's not. Maybe you can meet someone on the worst day of your year and things could turn out alright. And this song is half of the reason I love the movie.

just found this little gem:

"This is not a beauty that steals upon your unawares, that flatters and soothes your bruised spirit; this is not a beauty that you can hold in your hand and call your own and put in its place among familiar beauties that you know: it is a beauty that batters you and stuns you and leaves you breathless; there is no calmness in it nor control; it is like a fire that on a sudden consumes you, and you are left shaken and bare and yet by a strange miracle alive."

-Somerset Maugham, from his essay "Mandalay"

Love is Not Blind

"Some stupid people started the idea that because women obviously back up their own people through everything, therefore women are blind and do not see anything. They can hardly have known any women. The same women who are ready to defend their men through thick and thin...are almost morbidly lucid about the thinness of [their] excuses or the thickness of [their] head[s]. Love is not blind; that is the last thing it is. Love is bound, and the more it is bound, the less it is blind." (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy)

I just read this speech and I loved it. It's a little long, but definitely worth the time.

It's interesting to think about the different attitudes people have about life and how it's not bad to understand the difference between reality and the ideal, but there must be a balance in order to achieve real happiness.

manifesto for the school year

"Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength."

-August Wilson

There are some things I feel like I've slacked on this summer.

Not that this summer was a failure.

Not at all.

But I feel like I was just so busy and caught up in the many things I was doing (good things, mind you), that I lost a little bit of who I am.

Just a little bit.

I slacked off a little bit in some things that are important to me.

Just a little bit.

This is not me ragging on myself or moping about the past.

This is just me recommitting to a life I love.

A life that is full of passion and character and a few blue recycling bins.

A life of living the principle that less is more.

And that books and music and writing and good quality entertainment are not a waste of time.

That these books mean so much more when I'm not half-asleep.

That playing is just as important to my health as working.

And that learning is a privilege, not a burden.

So I'm going to unpack the boxes in my room, and figure out what to keep, what to get rid of and what to put away until I decide how important it is to me.

And recommit to loving the life God gave me. And remembering what is important.

image from this fabulous girl

Human-i-tease

Today and last night I realized I would probablylove my Humanities class if I actually took the time to do the readings. (Or do them earlier than 12 o'clock at night).

So I'm recommitting to this on-again, off-again relationship I have with my studies.

Dear Humanities,
I know that you are just a GE class. And that you don't directly relate to my major (although I do plan on advertising to humans, not animals).

But I am going to love you. We'll be good friends, spending lots of time together. (Thank you, 2660-page Norton Anthology of Western Literature)

And I promise to not save all the readings until the day before the late day of the test.

Love,
A girl that really wants to care about old Greek and Roman guys, orders of columns, and well, humanity.

{This line, which I read last night, from the Satyricon, struck me:

"He's got a clock in the dining room and a trumpeter all dressed up to tell him how much longer he's got to live."*

I feel like this needs to be made into a contemporary rock song.}






*Though I love this line, Trimalchio, I think you are a buffoon.

This is joy to me:

"Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world...always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God."

Ether 12:4

I do hope for a better world.

I believe in a better world, but I also believe in this world.

I believe in people.

People who infect the world with smiles and laughter. Who see the beauty through the bad news. Who love unconditionally and who never give up. Who are brave enough to believe in their dreams. Who have convictions and don't stray from them.

There is a lot more we could be doing. But that's the beauty of it: we can do something to make this world a little brighter and a little better.

And we are so blessed.

"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."

-Marcel Proust

image via deviant art

"This city just showed you that it's full of people ready to believe in good."

I was planning on posting about this movie, and the great quotes from it, but Katie beat me to it.

Go here. Read.

Savor the poetic symbolism of the Dark Knight.

**spoiler alert!**

My absolute favorite moment of the movie is when one of the convicts gets up and takes the detonator and says, "Give it to me. You can tell them I took it by force. Give it to me, and I'll do, what you shoulda did, ten minutes ago." And then he throws it out the window...

I think this movie is so powerful and has so many beautiful themes. It portrays evil so well without glorifying it; it portrays it as evil, and I think that is really important.


(not to mention the excellent musical score from it)

image

When your secret heart cannot speak so easily

Katie's post title reminded me of how much I love this song.



Love-to-be:
This one's for you.

Sometimes I just need to hear a song. Over and over. I need it because it feeds my soul and it builds me up and gives me that something I need to get through the day. It's a break from the monotone chaos of life. It's a fresh breath from the mundane. It is how I find my "invincible summer."

Today. This is that song.

“The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.”

-George Santayana

Am, Em, C, and the D-A-G...

...that's what I've got so far.



{On another note:} Today I let myself daydream a little bit. About life and love and what may or may not be. But it was the good kind of daydreaming, the kind where you still feel content with the way life is right now, even if it's not as much fun as the fantasy. It's the kind of thinking that makes me believe in my dreams. And believe that I deserve to have them come true someday; that I'm enough to make them real.

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
-Eleanor Roosevelt, (such an articulate lady)

image via vi.sualize.us

{side note}: this is currently hanging on my wall. in poster form. and I absolutely love it.

"The heart has reasons that reason does not understand" --Jacques Benigne Bossuel

Let's strip down.

Take it all off.

The makeup, the fake smile, the layers of clothes.

Or better, the things we make up, the false assumptions about you and me and us, and the layers of padding we smother our hearts with.

Let's really see each other.

Let's share our imperfection and maybe find affection.

You'll admire my blemishes, and I'll kiss your scars.

Let's get down to who we are. And forget about who we aren't.

Being perfect would be so boring.

Flaws make life interesting.

Let's strip down to just our two hearts, a little broken but still beating.

And see if we can't find something to talk about.

And maybe even fall in love.

Because all the garbage you've been told to think about me is gone.

You can see my naked heart for what it really is; for who I really am.

Let's strip down to two hearts, and find a common rhythm.

And maybe we will see that we really aren't that different after all.
Let's not be afraid to be real.
Let's not be afraid to feel.

"Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring." -Marilyn Monroe

image via this

more than just a pair of shoes

I really like this.

My favorite part is:

"it's time to get greedy for the stuff that really matters"

And the shoes are pretty rad too.

Too bad they are way out of my budget.

At least for now.

Maybe I'll splurge...

next summer.

because it makes me happy.

I found this today in one of my boss's books about Christianity. He left it at work, and it was SUPER slow, so I was flipping through it.

I really liked it.

"If there's anything in life that we should be passionate about, it's the gospel. And I don't mean passionate only about sharing it with others. I mean passionate about thinking about it, dwelling on it, rejoicing in it, allowing it to color the way we look at the world. Only one thing can be of most importance to each of us. And only the gospel ought to be.

-C.J. Mahaney

Sometimes I have to remind myself that the times when I have the most energy, when I feel the happiest, and the most balanced, and the most passionate about life, are the times when I am putting God first.