White flag.

I came across a quote by Roland Barthes the other day that said, "To whom could I put this question (with any hope of an answer)? Does being able to live without someone you loved mean you loved her less than you thought?"

I always wondered. If you can live without someone, and by that I mean, you were either pushed apart as a simple result of fate or choice. Does the fact that you were able to live without them mean you loved them less than you thought? Maybe not. I don't think it has anything to do with loving them less. I think it's a part of letting it go. Moving on. A natural part of self preservation and self-protection. When things end, (what you need to realize is that sometimes some things are worth fighting for more than others), but when they do regardless of the fact that you fought enough to keep them alive or not, you have every right to move on. Move forward. You may not realize that at the beginning. Because the beginning of the end is that phase where you are caught up, stuck, choked up on what it used to be and how much you want it back. Things change. I wouldn't say people leave. But people move on. And sometime beautiful connections are forced to end. They just have to.

We all have that two entirely different person inside of us. The too strong and too weak. You may not want to admit one or the other's existence. They exist, and they battle against each other. You see, this is a part of me comforting the other part of me. Talking the weak person inside me out of war. Raising the white flag, making peace.

A.

Vulnerable and proud.

Bored out of my skull, I was exploring the many iTunes store apps, searching for interesting apps that'll entertain me in the process of waiting for Mr. Sleep, I came across the TED app. I only recently became TED talks obsessed and that is ever since I took the public speaking course. So that night, I stayed up even later than the usual watching a talk after another until I came across Brene Brown. Brene is a researcher and author that shares what she's learned from a decade of research on the power authenticity, empathy and shame, courage and vulnerability, belonging and the need for connection and the affect these powerful emotions have on the way we live, love, parent, work and build relationships.

I, and I'm sure most of you, thought that vulnerability is a negative emotion. Unwanted and despised, because in our opinion it makes it weak. It kills strength and will-power. What I want to share with you is the story of how I was proven otherwise, of how I came to realize that there is no reason to be ashamed or afraid of being vulnerable.


"Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change."









Vulnerability does not = weakness.


A.

Sums it all up. Waiting.

“I have always, essentially, been waiting. Waiting to become something else, waiting to be that person I always thought I was on the verge of becoming, waiting for that life I thought I would have. In my head, I was always one step away. In high school, I was biding my time until I could become the college version of myself, the one my mind could see so clearly. In college, the post-college “adult” person was always looming in front of me, smarter, stronger, more organized. Then the married person, then the person I’d become when we have kids. For twenty years, literally, I have waited to become the thin version of myself, because that’s when life will really begin.
And through all that waiting, here I am. My life is passing, day by day, and I am waiting for it to start. I am waiting for that time, that person, that event when my life will finally begin.
I love movies about “The Big Moment” – the game or the performance or the wedding day or the record deal, the stories that split time with that key event, and everything is reframed, before it and after it, because it has changed everything. I have always wanted this movie-worthy event, something that will change everything and grab me out of this waiting game into the whirlwind in front of me. I cry and cry at these movies, because I am still waiting for my own big moment. I had visions of life as an adventure, a thing to be celebrated and experienced, but all I was doing was going to work and coming home, and that wasn’t what it looked like in the movies.
John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” For me, life is what was happening while I was busy waiting for my big moment. I was ready for it and believed that the rest of my life would fade into the background, and that my big moment would carry me through life like a lifeboat.
The Big Moment, unfortunately, is an urban myth. Some people have them, in a sense, when they win the Heisman or become the next American Idol. But even that football player or that singer is living a life made up of more than that one moment. Life is a collection of a million, billion moments, tiny little moments and choices, like a handful of luminous, glowing pearl. It takes so much time, and so much work, and those beads and moments are so small, and so much less fabulous and dramatic than the movies.
But this is what I’m finding, in glimpses and flashes: this is it. This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I’m waiting for, that adventure, that move-score-worthy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets – this pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of use will ever experience.”

- Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday life.