SempreDream

Mail…

Living overseas there is almost nothing I love more than to receive mail from home. There is something incredibly comforting about seeing your name on an envelope, postcard or package. Then there is the intense anticipation while running back to my room so I can rip open the seal and see what is inside. Whether it be words or something that reminds me of home and the people I love receiving mail always makes my day.

“I wanted to send you a hug, so I’m wrapping my arms around you with my heart and sending you this card “just because!” I want you to know that I am happy that you are a part of my life! Today, consider yourself hugged!” From a card I received recently

The distance of things…

Insignificant, invisible, irrelevant and alone. “God where are you?” Silence is the only reply. “God what do I do? Where do I go?” Silence. “God?” Nothing answers but endless silence and tears.

“She felt insignificant, that’s all.
especially at night with the lights off,
or whenever she looked up into space.

238,850.737 miles

that’s the distance to the moon,
she thought, trying to breathe
but unable to move her lungs
because the distance between things
was measured more in feelings
than feet—
and she felt it, deep and encompassing,
inside every part of her,
as if it were swallowing her up.”
(Poem by ‘The Dust Dances Too’ Picture by Matt Minsniewski)

A sad story, don’t you think?

It starts with “once upon a time” and ends with “a sad story, don’t you think?” Haruki Murakami’s “On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning” is a simple story that basically says all stories - love or not - start and end that way, no matter what is in between.

It’s not pessimistic to acknowledge. It’s realistic. Everything ends, sometime. And with endings come sadness. It’s non-negotiable. What we can control is the middle part. That’s what’s up in the air.

The bitter-sweetness of friendships, experiences, love, and life, is that the happier the beginnings and the middles, the sadder the endings. It’s easy to try to protect ourselves from sadness by hiding, cowering, from life and all the hurt that can accompany it. But being alive is just as much about pain as it joy, and even more about hope, faith, strength and just plain getting through when hearts are broken and life hurts.

If a sad ending is inevitable, let’s create memories of love and beauty every chance we have. Memories to hold onto during the lonely times when the day turns to night and morning seems far away.

“I’m so happy that I’m frightened. Wouldn’t it be awful if this was—was the high point?…” She looked at him dreamily. “Beauty and love pass, I know…Oh, there’s sadness too. I suppose all great happiness is a little sad. Beauty means the scent of roses and the death of roses…”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Impossible…

“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!” Audrey Hepburn

I wish I had more faith in the possible. I wish that all I saw in life were the possibilities, genuine beauty and potential that every day holds and every person possesses. Unfortunately I regularly overestimating the power of the impossible; selling myself short of what could be possible.

Muhammad Ali once said “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men (and woman) who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

Live to let you shine…

Boats and Birds by Gregory and the Hawk was my favourite song when I was 18. I thought its lyrics told a story that epitomised romance; loving somebody so much that you cherish their happiness more than you care about your love being reciprocated. But as Juan Antonio says in Vicky Christina Barcelona, “only unfulfilled love can be romantic”.

If you be my star

I’ll be your sky

you can hide underneath me

and come out at night

when I turn jet black

and you show off your light

I live to let you shine

but you can skyrocket away from me

and never come back if you find another galaxy

far from here

with more room to fly

just leave me your stardust to remember you by

I have come to realise since that the love described in the song is not a young person’s love. Adolescent love is too selfish, too fickle. As teenagers (and adults, to be fair), we fall in love with people for what they have to offer us. We are capable of deep love – infatuation – but we expect something in return; flattery, appreciation, security, to be looked after and adored.

The selfless devotion in the song describes the love of an adult. A mother’s love of her son. A father’s love of his daughter. A grandparent’s love of their grandchildren. A brother’s love of his sister. A love between lifelong friends. A God’s love of humanity. A love that changes as it grows and matures but cannot be undone, bestowed unconditionally, quietly, anonymously; so inconspicuous that is easily taken for granted.

A love that is willing to lay itself down for another without question or second thought. A love like that is heartbreaking in its selflessness, but too precious to set free.

When I was 18 (and even now), I would long for the day that I was beautiful, desirable, special enough for somebody to love me in that way. Now, I am realising that the kind of love that I long for is the kind of love that has made me the person I am today. I hope that, one day, I can use the strength that this love has given me to bestow it upon somebody else. Live to let someone else shine…

Even

After

All this time

The Sun never says

To the Earth,

“You owe me.”

Look

What happens

With a love like that.

It light the

Whole

Sky.

– Hafiz

Am I real?

Mark Twain once said, “What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.” People describe me as calm, organised, responsible, rational, nice, kind. Of course, I know better.

Yet despite my flaws, people actually seem to like me. Not everybody, naturally, but enough people. My family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, some strangers. And I wonder, do they like me for, or in spite of, my flaws? Or only because I have them so well hidden?

I worry about it, because I have learned that self-preservation comes with a price, in the form of a painstakingly maintained veil, an ever-present layer between us and the people in our lives. Essentially, the presence of that layer is the difference between like and love. Because you cannot love a veneer, no matter how shiny and pretty and enviable it is.

I am afraid to show my failures, to own them as part of my life story. As surprised as I am when people admire me - when they buy the facade - it’s what I want. It’s what I have unintentionally been striving for. I wonder whether I have spent my life fashioning a mask, rather than being true to myself.

Am I real?

“We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.”  Andre Berthiaume

A little time…

The people I respect the most in life are always saying that good things take time. That nothing worth having in life is ever easy and that the biggest mistake I can make is to live with the fear of making one. The problem is I’m inpatient and right now I am scared out of my wits that I am going to make a wrong decision.

I don’t want to look back in 5-10 years at the decisions I’m going to make and regret them or wish I had made a different decision. I want to make the right choices so I become whoever it is that I am meant to be and end up wherever I am meant to go.

I’m beginning to think that a wise woman I know was right when she said “So, have patience with yourself. Be less critical, and trust that as long as you are doing your best as you head in the direction that you are passionate about and feel God leading, you will eventually arrive where you’re meant to be and maybe, just maybe, you will surpass even your wildest dreams.”

Interdependent…

As humans were created with the ability and overpowering fundamental need to be connected in some way. We can on our own simply survive but in order to function as healthy human beings and live to our fullest potential we require supportive connections and positive relationships. Connection is a necessity. Yet in today’s society to be completely independent is considered the ultimate achievement and to admit you need help, the ultimate failure.

For many people (including myself) asking for help is the single hardest thing for us to do. It’s completely humiliating as an independent (ie. control freak) to admit that you don’t have it all together, that you can’t do something on your own and need help. Because for us in life failure is simply not an option, in the words of master Yoda “You do or you don’t, there is no try”.

However by being stubborn and independent we end up helping everyone else and forgetting about ourselves to the point of being burnt out and dying in isolated, self erected glass cells. Our problems grow in the darkness of isolation and overtime they overtake us obliterating everything light and beautiful in our lives.

Maybe if we as individuals/as a community/as a church offered, asked for and accepted the help we needed there would be fewer people struggling alone with eating disorders, depression and alcoholism. Maybe just maybe if we as individuals were less self-centred and more open to the connection’s we were created to have there would be less youth suicide and more people truly living and reaching their God given potential. Maybe society is wrong. Maybe the ultimate achievement is not being independent but being interdependent.

“Just because you accept help from someone, doesn’t mean you have failed. It just means you’re not in it alone.” Eric to Holly in the film Life as we know it

I’m letting go…

I like to be in control but recently I have rediscovered how little control I have. It is something I hate to admit but I am learning how to let go… I like the way that Francesca Battistelli put it…

“My heart beats, standing on the edge but my feet have finally left the ledge. Like an acrobat there’s no turning back. This is a giant leap of faith trusting and trying to embrace the fear of the unknown beyond my comfort zone. I’m letting go of the life I planned for me and my dreams. Losing control of my destiny, feels like I’m falling and that’s what it’s like to believe. So I’m letting go. Giving in to your gravity knowing that you are holding me. I’m not afraid but it feels like I’m falling and that’s what it’s like to believe. So I’m letting go.”

Street Sweeper…

On October 26, 1967, six months before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King Jr. said the following to a group of students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia.

“I want to ask you a question, and that is: What is your life’s blueprint?

Whenever a building is constructed, you usually have an architect who draws a blueprint, and that blueprint serves as the pattern, as the guide, and a building is not well erected without a good, solid blueprint.

Now each of you is in the process of building the structure of your lives, and the question is whether you have a proper, a solid and a sound blueprint.

I want to suggest some of the things that should begin your life’s blueprint. Number one in your life’s blueprint, should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your worth and your own somebodiness. Don’t allow anybody to make you feel that you’re nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance.

Secondly, in your life’s blueprint you must have as the basic principle the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor. You’re going to be deciding as the days, as the years unfold what you will do in life — what your life’s work will be. Set out to do it well.

And I say to you, my young friends, doors are opening to you—doors of opportunities that were not open to your mothers and your fathers — and the great challenge facing you is to be ready to face these doors as they open.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great essayist, said in a lecture in 1871, “If a man can write a better book or preach a better sermon or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, even if he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.”

This hasn’t always been true — but it will become increasingly true, and so I would urge you to study hard, to burn the midnight oil; I would say to you, don’t drop out of school. I understand all the sociological reasons, but I urge you that in spite of your economic plight, in spite of the situation that you’re forced to live in — stay in school.

And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don’t just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn’t do it any better.

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well. If you can’t be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.

Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. If you can’t be a sun, be a star. For it isn’t by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.” _{From the estate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.}