Love You More

I love being horribly straightforward. I love sending reckless text messages (because how reckless can a form of digitized communication be?) and telling people I love them and telling people they are absolutely magical humans and I cannot believe they really exist. I love the thought of saying, “Kiss me harder,” and “You’re a good person,” and, “You brighten my day.” I live my life as straight-forward as possible.

Because one day, I might get hit by a bus.

I could be walking down the street one day, blasting Rihanna or Fleetwood Mac, jamming so hard that I don’t see the bus coming. I could be walking with a book in my hand, reading until the very end. I could be paying total and complete attention, imagine the impact before it arrives.

And I’d really, really rather not die with some confusing statement I said sitting in the phone or the thoughts or the memory of someone I know, care about, need.

I know how it is—we all want to be mysterious. None of us want to get hurt. None of us want to look desperate. So we wait to respond to texts, phone calls, emails, Facebook messages, Tweets. So we communicate our emotions in how we end our messages (no period this time? Really gonna get them.). So we say vague, half-statements and expect people to read our minds.

But what if we died?

What if the last thing you ever texted that girl was, “I don’t know, whenever,” when she asked an important question?

Maybe it’s weird. Maybe it’s scary. Maybe it seems downright impossible to just be—to just let people know you want them, need them.    It's a very human feeling.  I'm just willing to admit to being human.

But there is nothing more beautiful than being desperate.  It's a very human feeling.  I'm just willing to admit to being human.

And there is nothing more risky than pretending not to care.

We are young and we are human and we are beautiful and we are not as in control as we think we are. We never know who needs us back. We never know the magic that can arise between ourselves and other humans.

We never know when the bus is coming, none of us do.  Live for today, like there's no tomorrow and remember to Love - it's the one thing we carry with us always and always is forever.

(So go text them back, call them back..)  

I am and always will be- the optimist. The hoper of far-flung hopes. The dreamer of improbable dreams. 

And.. when something hurts, it makes you beautiful..the cracks around your heart let the light shine through...

Throughout your life...you'll need sunsets, road trips, airplanes and long car rides, new songs, old songs, but people more than anything.  We all need people and you may need to be that other person to someone else, a living, breathing, screaming invitation to believe in better things - everyone we meet in life becomes important for a reason, sometimes just a season, but often when you look at them and know life is better for having them in it..hang on to them.

Sometimes, I think it is so hard to depend on people..people have their own lives, problems, dreams...and at the end of the day, all you have is yourself..and.that.has.to.be.enough.

There are a thousand ways to get noticed...most are just a gamble.  The easiest way to create an impact is to do it, one person at a time, with truth, with connection and with love..what would life be like without love.

Count Me In

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uGOZYoGMcY
Half of my love knee deep in
Hooked on a dream that is reeling me in
Oh is this how we begin?
Flowers on fire in a black and white fence

Curtains of rain all appear
Watching the skirt of the day you disappeared
Caught like a wheel in a groove
Cranking it big but it don't want to move

Count me in
Count me in
Count me in
Count me in

The water is perfectly still
Full of the thunder but waiting until
When the lightning hits the lake
You'll know how it feels to want you and wait

Count me in
Count me in
Count me in
Count me in

Count me in
Count me in
Count me in
Count me in (Repeat)

You know how you can hear something a hundred times in a hundred different ways before it finally gets through to you?  The ten truths listed below fall firmly into that category – life lessons that many of us likely learned years ago, and have been reminded of ever since, but for whatever reason, haven’t fully grasped.

This, my friends, is my attempt at helping all of us, myself included, “get it” and “remember it” once and for all…

The average human life is relatively short.

We know deep down that life is short, and that death will happen to all of us eventually, and yet we are infinitely surprised when it happens to someone we know.  It’s like walking up a flight of stairs with a distracted mind, and misjudging the final step.  You expected there to be one more stair than there is, and so you find yourself off balance for a moment, before your mind shifts back to the present moment and how the world really is.

LIVE your life TODAY!  Don’t ignore death, but don’t be afraid of it either.  Be afraid of a life you never lived because you were too afraid to take action.  Death is not the greatest loss in life.  The greatest loss is what dies inside you while you’re still alive.  Be bold.  Be courageous.  Be scared to death, and then take the next step anyway.

Being busy does NOT mean being productive.

Busyness isn’t a virtue, nor is it something to respect.  Though we all have seasons of crazy schedules, very few of us have a legitimate need to be busy ALL the time.  We simply don’t know how to live within our means, prioritize properly, and say no when we should.

Being busy rarely equates to productivity these days.  Just take a quick look around.  Busy people outnumber productive people by a wide margin.  Busy people are rushing all over the place, and running late half of the time.  They’re heading to work, conferences, meetings, social engagements, etc.  They barely have enough free time for family get-togethers and they rarely get enough sleep.  Yet, emails are shooting out of their smart phones like machine gun bullets, and their day planners are jammed to the brim with obligations.  Their busy schedule gives them an elevated sense of importance.  But it’s all an illusion.  They’re like hamsters running on a wheel...wait a minute, I'm running like a hamster on a wheel!

Though being busy can make us feel more alive than anything else for a moment, the sensation is not sustainable long term.  We will inevitably, whether tomorrow or on our deathbed, come to wish that we spent less time in the buzz of busyness and more time actually living a purposeful life.

Some kind of failure always occurs before success.

Most mistakes are unavoidable.  Learn to forgive yourself.  It’s not a problem to make them.  It’s only a problem if you never learn from them.

If you’re too afraid of failure, you can’t possibly do what needs to be done to be successful.  The solution to this problem is making friends with failure.  You want to know the difference between a master and a beginner?  The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.  Behind every great piece of art is a thousand failed attempts to make it, but these attempts are simply never shown to us.

Thinking and doing are two very different things.

Success never comes to look for you while you wait around thinking about it.

You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.  Knowledge is basically useless without action.  Good things don’t come to those who wait; they come to those who work on meaningful goals.  Ask yourself what’s really important and then have the courage to build your life around your answer.

It’s not other people’s job to love you; it’s yours.

It’s important to be nice to others, but it’s even more important to be nice to yourself.  You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.  So make sure you don’t start seeing yourself through the eyes of those who don’t value you.  Know your worth, even if they don’t.

Today, let someone love you just the way you are – as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as incomplete as you think you are.  Yes, let someone love you despite all of this, and let that someone be YOU. 

Everything Happens For A Reason: Be Afraid..But Do It Anyway

Everything Happens For A Reason: Be Afraid..But Do It Anyway: My whole life, I’ve been telling myself “don’t be afraid.” And it is only now that I’m realizing how stupid that is.  Don’t be afraid.  Lik...

Be Afraid..But Do It Anyway

My whole life, I’ve been telling myself “don’t be afraid.” And it is only now that I’m realizing how stupid that is.  Don’t be afraid.  Like saying “don’t move out of the way when someone tries to punch you,” or “don’t flinch at the heat of a fire,” or “don’t blink.” Don’t be human. I’m afraid and you’re afraid and we’re all always going to be afraid. Because that’s the point. What I should be telling myself is “be afraid, but do it anyway.” Live anyway.

Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe. No less than the trees and the stars. In the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.

 I don’t need to be rich or have a fancy home. I just want to go to sleep at night knowing my labor had heart, I loved fiercely and lived close enough to the edge that I can see the waves kiss the rocks.

You can forget that other people carry pieces of your own story around in their heads.  I’ve always thought- put together all those random pieces from everyone who’s ever known you from your parents to the guy who once sat next to you on a bus, and you’d probably see a fuller version of your life than you even did while living it.

An amazing thing happens when you get honest with yourself and start doing what you love, what makes you happy. Your life literally slows down. You stop wishing for the weekend. You stop merely looking forward to special events. You begin to live in each moment and you start feeling like a human being. You just ride the wave that is life, with this feeling of contentment and joy. You move fluidly, steadily, calm and graceful. A veil is lifted, and a whole new perspective is born.

On Love and Life..Happy V-Day

 Sometimes, I think that the stars  are actually a huge 

connect-the-dot puzzle, and if we could only find the right pattern in which to connect them, then maybe we could figure out what they’re trying to tell us. And I think that there is a different pattern for every living person, every person that has ever lived, and every person that will ever live. So in a way, we’re all written into the night sky. And we gaze up at the sky, lying beneath our fears and dreams, and futures, and if we could find the right pattern, we might be able to know where we’re supposed to be. But the night sky is bigger than I can even begin to grasp, so I lay down on the damp summer grass amidst laughter and sips of wine, and I trace my finger along the brightest stars I can find, and I smile. The stars can keep the burden of knowing where it is that I will end up, because I am happy with where I am right now. When they twinkle, I think they’re winking at me, like they know something I don’t know, but I don’t mind. Sometimes, I like being in the dark, and right now, I don’t mind at all.

I think I want my heart and my passions to be the most beautiful things about me..remembered or in present day sense.

Two things you will learn in life: one, that the sound of someone else’s heartbeat next to your own is like putting a shell to your ear and hearing the ocean’s roar and echo inside of it. And two, the best kind of naked is when you’ve undressed, not for sex, but understanding- when the person in the same room watches you remove your jeans or your t-shirt, and they don’t want to see the skin underneath, they want to see your soul.

The world is heavy, but your bones (just a cubic inch) can hold 19,000 pounds. Ounce for ounce, they are stronger than steel. Atom for atom, you are more precious than diamonds, and stars have died so that you may live. You need to remember these things when you say that you are weak and worthless.  I have to remember this when I feel weak and worthless.

One of my philosophy professors lectured wildly about love once, yelling: “When you’re in love with someone, that person is the lighthouse of your universe.” ( I scrawled it inside Science and Poetry in pencil- lighthouse of your universe- as if I would ever forget that phrase.) He was a delightful caricature of his position. I could swear he literally tore his hair out while howling at us. He went on, “Nothing means as much without that person.” One of the men in the class repeated, incredulous, half-laughing, “So you’re saying you can’t enjoy, like, a vacation, without someone if you’re really in love with them?” “Of course not.” the professor replied. “Not completely. You recognize beauty, but beauty means less if they don’t witness it with you. Beauty is less. You see something sublime and your first thought is that they should be there with you. It’s not as good without them. They illuminate. They make everything more.“

And..so it is..another Valentine's Day..may it (he/she) be more valuable than diamonds, more precious than a star winking from heaven and may everything you see together make sense in this universe.

Everything Happens For A Reason: Beautiful Daughters

Everything Happens For A Reason: Beautiful Daughters: When you have a daughter, you start to realize she's just as strong as everyone else in the house -- a force to be reckoned with, a s...

Everything Happens For A Reason: Beautiful Daughters

Everything Happens For A Reason: Beautiful Daughters: When you have a daughter, you start to realize she's just as strong as everyone else in the house -- a force to be reckoned with, a s...

Beautiful Daughters

When you have a daughter, you start to realize she's just as strong as everyone else in the house -- a force to be reckoned with, a soul on fire with the same life and gifts and passions as any man,"  at least this is how I see it, from my perspective. "But browsing the make-up aisle at Target, you also begin to realize most people won't see her that way. They'll see her as a pretty face and, and they'll tell her she has to look a certain way to have any worth or influence.   That's the media hype in print and media these days.  My daughter can't compete with "photo-shopped images", nobody can, nor can I.

But words do have power and maybe, just maybe, the words of a mother or father can begin to compete with the words of the world. Maybe a mother's words can deliver her daughter through this gauntlet of institutionalized shame and into a deep, unshakable sense of her own worthiness and beauty."

I often tell my girls to "be true to themselves"..that they are beautiful, smart, funny young women.  "Mom, you HAVE to say that, because you're my mom."   I'd say it anyway, I tell her..but she doesn't hear me.  She doesn't see what I see.

I believe we need to give "a radically different meaning" to the words often used in beauty advertisements such as brilliant strength, age-defying, and flawless finish.  I would love to assure my baby girls that  "Little One, you love everything pink and frilly and I will surely understand if someday makeup is important to you." However, I appeal to her, "I pray three words will remain more important to you -- the last three words you say every night, when I ask the question: 'Where are you the most beautiful?'

 Three words so bright no concealer can cover them. Where are you the most beautiful? " On the inside."

My girls, wherever your journey leads you, may you always feel beautiful and confident on the inside, because beauty is skin deep, and your true beautiful self, your soul, what makes you individual, is what shines brighter than any lip gloss or blusher.  I love that you are who you are and to all of the mothers and fathers out there..may you empower your daughters with the same inner beauty confidence.

You see, while we can provide name brand jeans, haircuts, make-up, we often forget to spend as much time and money on what's really going to matter some day.  There will come a day when some "fella" asks my daughter on a date, I hope he takes the time to see what is inside because when we are at the other spectrum of our life, it is the inner beauty that will hold and keep another soul close to yours.

Who Are Your Roots?

LEAF PEOPLE Some people come into your life and they are like leaves on a tree. They are only there for a season. You can’t depend on them or count on them because they are weak and only there to give you shade. Like leaves, they are there to take what they need and as soon as it gets cold or a wind blows in your life they are gone. You can’t be angry with them, it’s just who they are. BRANCH PEOPLE There are some people who come into your life and they are like branches on a tree. They are stronger than leaves, but you have to be careful with them. They will stick around through most seasons, but if you go through a storm or two in your life it’s possible that you could lose them. Most times they break away when it’s tough. Although they are stronger than leaves, you have to test them out before you run out there and put all your weight on them. In most cases they can’t handle too much weight. But again, you can’t be mad with them, it’s just who they are. ROOT PEOPLE If you can find some people in your life who are like the roots of a tree then you have found something special. Like the roots of a tree, they are hard to find because they are not trying to be seen. Their only job is to hold you up and help you live a strong and healthy life. If you thrive, they are happy. They stay low key and don’t let the world know that they are there. And if you go through an awful storm they will hold you up. Their job is to hold you up, come what may, and to nourish you, feed you and water you. In our lives we have many leaves, branches, but few roots. Sounds like a silly analogy right? I think there is a lot of truth in it. The ecosystem that a tree provides is not only giving life to the tree, but the importance of the roots that give the tree life, which sustain it, and allows it to grow and thrive, providing shelter for many of the other things that live under or within it. Love your roots.