Live

People are forever telling me "cell phones cause brain tumors", or "running is bad for your knees", or this or that or the other thing is bad for you. Quite frankly, my friends, worry will you dig you an early grave faster than anything. I'm not suggesting you make McD's your top choice for quick meals. I'm just saying try to relax a little and enjoy life. Life's too short to consume it with worrying about horrible possibilities.

Mistaken identity

I've been packing and working on random projects throughout today, and started to get really hungry, so I ran over to Subway to grab a sandwich. For some reason, I haven't made it to the grocery store yet to re-stock my pantry. Hah. Seems pointless a week before I plan to move.

Anyway.... The guys who made my sandwich asked me at checkout, "Are you a student at Southern?"
I guess he planned to give me a discount if I was. About a half dozen things went through my head at once. I was flattered that he thought I looked like a college student, then annoyed that I still look that young. Then dubious, because he asked at all. "Uhh, yeah, I just walked out of summer class actually with my diamond nose stud and my questionable T-shirt with skulls on it, and drove over here to grab a sandwich." I didn't say that, of course, but it ran through my mind. Poor guy has obviously never set a toe on campus, either that or he is not too attentive to details. Ironically, I actually still have my old ID in my wallet, and I could have shown it to him and gotten a discount, but the thought never occurred to me, and even if it had, I wouldn't have. I might go ahead and hook up cable TV for free if Comcast forgets to turn it off, but I've never really had the desire to claim to be a student when I'm not. I'm very glad my academic career as a whole is over. That was kind of a funny moment in an otherwise (mostly) ordinary day though.

Gone crazy, leave a message.

Mowed the lawn - check. Checked job listings for the day - check. Stood in line for 30 min to pay my Comcast bill - check (seriously irritating bit, that). Worked out at the BX - check. Finished packing my books - check. Wrote a letter to my grandparents - check. Those things along with other miscellaneous errands, have me feeling decently accomplished for the day. Not working every day is hard on me. It makes me feel sluggish and unhappy. I'm going to have to keep getting out and running little errands even if it uses fuel in my car. I can't deal with the four walls closing in here. Gotta keep moving or I'm going to go crazyyy. Crazy Mandy is not a good thing.

Touched by an Angel - poem by Maya Angelou

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

-Maya Angelou

Taking risks

"To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out for another is to risk involvement.
To expose your feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas, your dreams, before a crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To hope is to risk despair.
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. Persons who risk nothing do nothing, have nothing, and are nothing. They may avoid suffering and sorrow, but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, or live. Chained by their attitudes, they are slaves, for they have forfeited their freedom.
Only a person who risks is free."

So what are you waiting for? A written invitation to participate in life? It's called a birth certificate. ;-)

Bugs

If Johann Strauss II had been writing his composition "Roses from the South" (Rosen aus dem Süden) in Tennessee, it would have been entitled "Kakerlaken aus dem Süden" (Roaches from the South) I believe. *shudders* This area of the country is an entomologist's dream!

For the record, I tend to be a neat/clean freak, and my roommate tends to be too. And she's sprayed the house too, multiple times. There's no keeping the bugs out here. I miss life in Colorado, where the largest spider I saw was the size of the smallest spider I've seen here.

Time to pack...

Sorting through years of memories... piles of stuff. Most of it unnecessary, some of it needs to go. But all of it is little pieces of my life. The flower I wore in my hair to a Big Band concert, the shirt I bought in British Columbia...

A thousand memories fit into one 10 x 11 foot room. Glimpses of the past 28 years of my life, and everything I've collected along the way.

There's a chapter in my life that's closing, and a new one that is just beginning. I don't mourn the past. It taught me lessons I had to learn in life. And I don't dread the future - I celebrate it, with all of its possibilities and mysteries. But I do feel the tug of emotions that tie me to memories from days gone by. I see the beauty in where I've been led in my life to the point I'm at now. The pitfalls I avoided, although at the time I didn't see them as such. In some ways, it's like looking at old photographs, and seeing a snapshot of the way things were. I saw a few photographs today too... some that were worth much more than a thousand words.

Ah, well... I need to get back to work. Still plenty to do. I feel so infinitely blessed to have the life that I have. I wouldn't trade it for anything, and I can't wait to make new memories to look back on in future years.

"I"

I threw myself a pity party of one today. I decided my problems were more important than anything else going on in the world, and I wholeheartedly sank into the mire of my despair. Fortunately, I didn't stay there for long, thanks to the voice of reason coming from someone who loves me. I don't think I fully left my self-constructed zone of misery though, until just a bit ago, when I stumbled across the blog of a former schoolmate of mine, Daniel Harper.

I had been cranky all day about my recent job loss, getting told that my remaining job didn't need me today, the aches and pains of recent minor injuries and muscle tension. And I suddenly felt very, very ashamed of myself. I have every reason to be ashamed of myself.

It's a blog written by a 25-year-old, fighting for his life and battling brain cancer, and still finding something to be positive about. His story of his day-to-day battle, and the love of his wife who works a full-time job and still manages to take care of him too. The love in his 'voice' when he talks about her, and how she married him knowing that he had brain cancer. And it literally broke my heart and I cried, because I can read in his words both the beauty of the love that keeps them both going, and the incredible loss that they deal with on a daily basis. He said that in the midst all of his pain, his one hope is that God can still use him to touch the lives of others. Well, Daniel, your hope is realized.

But what broke my heart most was realizing how easy I really have it, how much I am truly blessed, and how ridiculously often I use the word "I" without a thought for anyone else. I'm sure one could argue that there will nearly always be someone in the world who has it worse than you do, or someone in the world who has it better. That's besides the point. Even in comparing myself to others, I am still predominantly thinking of myself.

The point I am trying to make, to myself if to no one else is, and what I took away from Daniel's blog more than anything was the journey he has been on. The constant battle in his own mind to see the bigger picture, and not be consumed by the self-pity that so easily ensues; and in his case, I would say from a human standpoint, he has every right to feel sorry for himself. It really doesn't get much worse than to be young and full of dreams and ideas and stuck in a body that is in complete rebellion. And yet, somewhere in the midst of all of it, he seems to have realized that positivity and optimism and God-centered thinking may be the only things that keep him going. Even though his natural reaction could very easily be to "curse God and die" as Job's friends so aptly put it, he is fighting to keep his mind centered on life, on things to live for.

I'm incredibly thankful for the reminder - for the jarring reality check. I don't really think it was a coincidence that I found his blog today either. When I was in college, it was generally an amazing speaker at convo (there were approx. 1 or 2 of those in any given year, for the record) whose story would speak to me and jolt me from my complacency. One year, it was a Vietnamese woman who spoke - she was the little girl from the Time photo running down the street on fire from napalm - and her incredible story that tore me away from my depression over my ongoing battles with TMJD pain. This time, it was Daniel Harper's story that reminds me. But really, I think it is my Abba Father speaking to me where I'm at, through the stories of others and their journeys. In any case, I am grateful.

The Naysayers

"The greatest revenge is to accomplish what others say you cannot do." -Unknown

I've never really understood why some people seem to feed off of throwing up roadblocks and creating problems where there are no problems to begin with. The hardest part to take is when it comes from people who should be encouraging you. I've found so many times that things really can be as simple as you make them. If you want to make them complicated, you can, but why would you want to?
I'm not even close to being the world's smartest human, but neither am I lacking in scruples or incapable of clear thinking. It is so trying to be questioned as though you have the mental capacity of a small child. The final conclusion I came to at the end of today though, was that it's my life and I'm the only one who can live it and enjoy it to the fullest. There is no room in my life for negative people. Life is beautiful, and yes life is at times tragic, but life is rich. Call me crazy, but I don't ever want to stop dreaming, or stop going on life adventures. That, to me, is the stuff of life. I don't put much stock in the ordinary, I don't aspire to be normal. I don't feel ready to be satisfied with average. Carpe diem.

"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11

I was needing some encouragement tonight, and I found these quotes:
"It is a well-known fact that we see the faults in other's works more readily than we do in our own." -- Pablo Picasso

"To escape criticism - do nothing, say nothing, be nothing." -- Elbert Hubbard

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway ." -- Eleanor Roosevelt

"It is much easier to be critical that to be correct." --Benjamin Disreli

"Blame is safer than praise." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The resentment that criticism engenders can demoralize employees, family members and friends, and still not correct the situation that has been condemned." -- Dale Carnegie

"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain... and most fools do." -- Dale Carnegie

The First Division - speech

Picked up a copy of this speech at Cantigny Park near Chicago Illinois, the estate of Colonel Robert McCormick who served in the First Division during his military career and also ran the Chicago Tribune for years afterward.

General Pershing: General De Chambrun - Whom I remember so well at the Battle of Cantigny, with your sage advice, your calm assurance, and your pipe; and you men of the two republics who laid down your lives in brotherly heroism. Over the years, we shall remember you, sleeping together on the battlefields, peacefully, like children in a nursery surely your spirits are with us today as we commemorate the first division. Our soldiers came from every state and of the races which make the American nation. The senior officers were picked men from the regular army - men devoted to the principles of duty, honor, country. The juniors were chosen ones from that flowering of our people. The first officers training camp - young men who rushed to hardship and death without thought of material or military reward. Battle hardened in the division, many of its officers were promoted to lead the troops arriving from America - Colonels, Brigadiers, two Chiefs of staff of Army Corps, one Chief of Corps Artillery, seven Division Commanders, three Corps Commanders, and the Commander of an Army. The American expeditionary force was in large part led and leavened by the men of the First Division. We trained in the summer and maneuvered in the cold fall and winter of the French Comte. Our communications were cut by the Armies reinforcing Italy, and supplies failing, men suffered and horses starved. This was the period of greatest hardship experienced by American soldiers since Valley Forge. But no one complained. And one bitter day in January, the order of battle showed "The American Division" in the line. Occupying a position which afforded no view of the enemy, but in full sight of his observation post on Montsec, without aviation against a foe richly supplied with airplanes, exposed to enemy air raids and to enemy aerial observation, The First Division underwent its baptism of fire. Here that iron Division was forged to steel in shell fire and tempered in the blood of its dead. It learned to receive fire to which it could not reply, to bury comrades to which it could not avenge. Not until the first night of March, when, under the protection of barrage and mortar fire, the enemy raided our lines for prisoners - to take none, but to leave his troops prisoners in our hands and his dead for us to bury - did it taste of victory. After the British catastrophe in Picardy, the First Division was among the troops chosen to restore the lines. Here it fought for forty bloody days and suffered five thousand casualties, and here at Cantigny score a small, but desperate, victory at a moment when victory was indispensable to the allied cause after the French rout on the Chemin Des Dames. Had the American Division failed that day, the last hope of the allies would have waned. But it did not fail. From here it went to fight in the decisive battle of Soissons; to victory of St. Mihiel, to the blood-bath of the Argonne,; to Sedan; and at last to plant its banners on the walls of Ehrenbreitstein, and to water its horses in the Rhine. In all these battles the First Division never failed to take an objective; it never lost a position taken; it never left a dead commander unburied. The officers march forward on foot with the men. Only those who went to the rear in battle rode - and they in ambulances. Its victories were won at bitter cost. Its lost in dead, wounded, and broken by hardship three times more men than it numbered on its mustering day. Every officer who served here at Cantigny was killed or promoted before the Armistice. Their great work done, the men of the Division returned to the people from whom they had sprung. You will not find our soldiers among the leaders in commerce and industry, nor seeking the spoils of political office. Well they know that they can never again serve their country so gloriously as they served in the war, nor receive any material reward equal to that of duty done. They do not talk of their triumphs of sufferings. But from their faces their neighbors know the ordeal they have survived. Quietly they await the day when they will camp once more with their comrades at the Vibouac of the dead. But the First Division will never die in the memory of gallant people. For them it will march forever. March on then, First Division! March over the sunny hills of France; March through the flaming towns of Picardy; up the shell-swept slopes of the Lorraine; through the gas-filled forest of the Argonne; on into the everlasting glory!

Cantigny, France

August 9, 1937