sum of all the people we have ever met

We are the sum of all the people we have ever met.

There's no doubt this is true, although there are some people that I wish I have never met. The ones where you knew deep down that they did not deserve your time, but you remained hopeful anyway. The ones you want to quickly forget but you know will only linger in the back of your mind the next time you meet someone else. The failed ones that make you more cynical than you were to start with.

Each failed relationship is a tragedy of its own, but the ability to look back on a relationship and reflect fondly on how someone could shape your life and values is very telling. Not all the people we've met are worth remembering.

Getting over someone is a lot like unravelling a sweater. (Stay with me on this corny analogy. I blame skinny girl for inspiring this train of thought) How tightly knit it is will determine how easy it is to unravel. The relationships that hold little meaning will unravel with a simple tug, and the yarn will quickly straighten itself out to point where you never knew that it was ever part of anything. But, if the relationship was very tightly knit, and their lives were so intertwined that they wouldn't be as kind, good, brave, (and any other positive trait) as they are now without the other's influence, any unravelled yarn will still retain the original bends and loops. Don't take my word on this, as I'm no knitting genius, but it's probably easier to knit the sweater back together with the memory of those knitting patterns within the yarn itself.

come on, skinny love

"Come on skinny love, what happened here?"

The lyrics of Bon Iver's Skinny Love strike a chord that resonates in all relationships -- that fail. Of course, when you’re in your late twenties where some of your closer friends have found “the one” and you’re attending more weddings than late nights out, you start to wonder, What happened here??

There are several interpretations to the song but I agree more with the interpretation that the “skinny love” is something that must be developed. “Skinny” describes new kind of love at the beginning of a new relationship. Not the butterflies-in-your-stomach-kind-of -love but the type of love you must find & form when you get into your Nth fight, long after the “honeymoon" stage has passed and logistics of co-existing in a relationship surface. It's a love that needs to be nourished. Without nourishment, skinny love doesn't stand a chance.

Sometimes it’s hard to get past that “skinny” stage. She’ll accuse him of all their problems, as she’ll “be holding all the tickets”. And he’ll be “owing all of the fines”. If you can’t get past skinny, then he writes ”pour a little salt, we were never here”. He urges her to “cut all the ropes” and to let him fall.

Not to be overly cynical in a happy blog - I find the most powerful lines of the lyrics to be the chorus because it offers up hope. And hope is powerful in our always evolving concept of how love is defined as we get older in relationships.

"and I told you to be patient
and I told you to be fine
and I told you to be balanced
and I told you to be kind"

Someone once told me; “we are the sum of all the people we have ever met”. With any relationship, you learn a lot about yourself and you always walk away with something.




There are several covers of Bon Iver's Skinny Love on Youtube but I really like Bella Ferraro's raw and nervous 1st audition (check the microphone shake @2:40).

the one who makes life come to life

After trying on my bridesmaid's dress today, I decided to search online for hair and accessory ideas. Naturally I stumble onto weddingbee.com which is a bridezilla's resource for all sorts of wedding ideas, and surprisingly, I came across some great quotes from someone who's planning to write their own wedding vows. Just thought I would share since we all enjoy sappiness...

From The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

From The Irrational Season, By Madeline L’Engle

But ultimately there comes a moment when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take…It is indeed a fearful gamble…Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature. To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take…If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation…It takes a lifetime to learn another person…When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected.

And from Now we are Six by A.A. Milne

A soul mate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise. Our soul mate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we’re two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we’ve found the right person. Our soul mate is the one who makes life come to life. 

Life Lessons from a fable

As children, we are remarkably aware. We absorb and process information at a speed that we’ll never again come close to achieving. New sights, new sounds, new smells, new people, new emotions, new experiences: we are learning about our world and its possibilities. Everything is new, everything is exciting, everything engenders curiosity. And because of the inherent newness of our surroundings, we are exquisitely alert; we are absorbed; we take it all in. Who knows when it might come in handy?

But as we grow older, the blasé factor increases exponentially. Been there, done that, don’t need to pay attention to this, and when in the world will I ever need to know or use that. Before we know it, we have shed that innate attentiveness, engagement, and curiosity for a host of passive, mindless habits. And even when we want to engage, we no longer have that childhood luxury. Gone are the days where our main job was to learn, to absorb, to interact; we now have other, more pressing (or so we think) responsibilities to attend to and demands on our minds to address. And as the demands on our attention increase—an all too real concern as the pressures of multitasking grow in the increasingly 24/7 digital age—so, too, does our actual attention decrease. As it does so, we become less and less able to know or notice our own thought habits, and more and more allow our minds to dictate our judgments and decisions, instead of the other way around.

From a great article on one of my fave books- Le Petit Prince
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/2012/03/18/the-big-lesson-of-a-little-prince-recapture-the-creativity-of-childhood/

Re-post (From my 23 year old self)

Three Levels of Conscious Reflection

“Every man participating in a culture has three levels of conscious reflection: his specific ideas about things, his general beliefs or convictions, and his metaphysical dream of the world.” -- Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 18 (University of Chicago Press, 1984).

“The first of these are the thoughts he employs in the activity of daily living; they direct his disposition of immediate matters and, so, constitute his worldliness. One can exist on this level alone for limited periods, though pure worldliness must eventually bring disharmony and conflict.

“Above this lies his body or beliefs, some of which may be heritages simply, but others of which he will have acquired in the ordinary course of his reflection. Even the simplest souls define a few rudimentary conceptions about the world, which they repeatedly apply as choices present themselves. These, too, however, rest on something more general.

“Surmounting all is an intuitive feeling about the imminent nature of reality, and this is the sanction to which both ideas and beliefs are ultimately referred for verification. Without the metaphysical dream it is impossible to think of men living together harmoniously over an extent of time. The dream carries with it an evaluation, which is the bond of spiritual community.”

My Specific Ideas About Things
Always eat breakfast. Make New Year's resolutions and follow through. Use post-its to organize everything. Only write in pencil (so you can erase). Respect your parents. Stop picking on your sister. Appreciate film. Eat well. Go places. Hang around those who challenge you. Continuously monitor your weaknesses. Put yourself in uncomfortable positions to test your strengths. Max out your 401-K and IRA. Keep learning. There is no such thing as enough shoes.
My General Beliefs or Convictions
Do good and good things will come to you.
Never stick with your first impressions of people.
Reality is relative.

My Metaphysical Dream of the World

This is it. Right here. Right now. There's no worrying about pre/post lives or other worldly things. All you have is time. You can't carry over or borrow it. Strictly use it or lose it.  So use it. And suffer the consequences. And reap the benefits. Just take it all in stride.

*What I can't believe is that I still hold myself to these very things five years later.

Real

http://sylviethecamera.smugmug.com/

“Our reflections rolled and flickered over the flawed old glass of the four long windows, with all the loveliness of Christmas past and for a moment it was as though everything had already happened.  We had loved and died and left no trace.  And what it wanted, what the whole world wanted, was to be made real.”

--Anne Enright, THE FORGOTTEN WALTZ

Run Team Kina

truly an amazing person. nominated for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Woman Of The Year and deservingly so. after raising money through her virtual benefit concert (video above), Kina set another lofty goal of raising $50,000 for a cancer research grant. too ambitious? her group of dedicated runners of RunTeamKina raised $71,886. 

the money she raised will go a long way for any lab needing funds. pilot projects are ideas that just need to get off the ground. once they have enough substantial research, the little idea can grow into a potential new way of looking at the scientific puzzle where interested investigators can fund a larger scale project. 

i was lucky enough to see her perform in NY recently and meet her backstage. she’s back from a world tour and her music is refreshingly original. her lyrics are relatable and you can’t help but imagine the path in life she’s been through. when here mother was Sick in the hospital, her lyrics resonated through to family members sleeping in waiting rooms waiting for love ones;  “somehow my love might make it go”.