So there's this boy...

Men and Women. Together.

Just proof that God has a sense of humor.

Sometimes I don't see how two people of the same species can be so entirely opposite. And therein lies the beauty of it. Hopelessly drawn to each other, decade after decade. We have somehow managed to not die out. Somehow managed to make it work, despite our obvious differences. Lovers are found, families created, and lives propelled forward to continue the cycle.

I'm no exception to the age old theory that opposite attract. I've also had a weakness for men in my life. Men that need fixing. I tend to be a fixer. I like to hear/see a problem and think of a solution. I do have doses of empathy and sympathy, but I'm not a large fan of complaining without thinking of a solution. I'm also a big believer in people- in their worth, in their potential, in the great gifts they have been given, in their talents, and in encouraging them to use them. However, in the past (and unfortunately, I'm sure in my future as well) I have been too far ahead of those I'm trying to "fix". I have always struggled with the concept of "to each their own" and it is something I have only recently begun to really live by. Don't get me wrong, I believe that we should all have compassion for one another, we should all seek to empathize with each other, we should all live Ubuntu, but not everyone is on the same path. Not everyone is made of the same fabric. It is our differences, our personalities that make this world so wonderfully big and beautiful

So in the past year and a half that I have really been trying to do some soul searching, changing the way I do relationships has been on the agenda.

And what do you know, when I least expected it, I had this wonderfully, completely opposite man drop into my life. Someone who mutually revels in the joy that is in every moment of life, and yet someone who sees the world in a completely different way from me. Someone who is spontaneous for my planning. Someone who is laid back for my high strung. Someone who is outgoing for my occasional quietness. Someone who lives deeply in each and every moment for my eternal future outlook. And although I don't know exactly where this relationship will head, I know that I want to do it differently than before. I want to do it right this time. I want to stop looking for excuses, reasons to leave, things to fix and I want to start seeing this incredible person before my eyes.

I stumbled (literally! via stumbleupon.com) across this quote and can't help but share it, in all its magnificence:


After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul, and you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning and company doesn’t mean security, and you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts and presents aren’t promises, and you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes open, with the grace of an adult, not the grief of a child, and you learn to build all your roads on today because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans. After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much. So plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. And you learn that you really can endure… that you really are strong, and you really do have worth.

~Veronica A. Shoffstall

Be Where You Are.

My entire life has revolved around school. Seriously. I was one of those crazy kids who couldn't wait to get on the bus for school and hated missing a single day, even in kindergarten. I was an annoyingly highstrung high schooler who wouldn't let myself do anything fun until my homework was completed- perfectly (my parents really lucked out on that one!). And I finished college as a worn down, burnt out, confused graduate in Urban Planning. Just one little thing, I had always been so obsessed about school, the grades, the papers, the tests, that I had forgotten to figure out exactly what it was I wanted to do with my life. I may have graduated with a stellar GPA, but I started to realize that I didn't want the life it had set me up for. I didn't want to pursue a career in the subject I had spent 4 years studying. Somewhere in those 4 years, I had forgotten that school is meant to be a means to an end, not the other way around.
So here I sit, with a Bachelor of Science in Urban Planning (a predominately male saturated field, mind you) and not a damn idea what to do with it. Instead, I'm working 4 jobs two of which involve changing dirty diapers and one which consists of being degraded while getting my customers another round of diet cokes and cheesy biscuits. I can't help thinking where I went wrong. Except.

 I don't feel that way.
 At all.

Sure, it would be great to not have to discipline other people's children or to not be spoken to like I am a stupid servant, but honestly, I enjoy my 3 days a week where I get to sleep in until 10am instead of waking up at 6am to put on a business suit and conquer the world. I am more than content to work, and work hard, at my 4 jobs and try to save a little of cash money while I prepare to go (yup, you guessed it) back to school.

This time, I'm hoping my perfectionism won't get the best of me and I will stay focused on the fact that school is temporary, but what I am preparing for is long term. The moral of the story, for all you that are wondering where this rambling is going (lest you forget that the title is Worth and Wisdom, with a little wackiness and laughter thrown in) is that you don't have to have a set plan. That you really don't answer to anyone besides yourself in terms of your happiness. And that if you wake up every morning with a smile on your face and joy in your heart, that is really half the battle.

Take it from a crazy, driven, perfectionist. People will always tell you what you should be doing with your time, how much money you should be making, and what you should be doing to prepare for your future. But they don't hold your answers. Only you do. And perhaps if I had stopped being concerned with "fulfilling my potential" by relentlessly chasing after my academic goals, I would have taken some time to realize that I didn't even like what I was learning. So don't forget to breathe, to know that you have your whole life to "achieve your potential", and take some time to see that your potential is really the way you handle your life each and every day you wake up. If you wake up happy, willing to help and love on others, than I think you have accomplished more than any doctorate recipient. It's a lesson that cost me $33 thousand dollars in student loans to learn. But considering that many people die without ever learning that lesson, I would say it was worth every single penny.

My Hero

This may seem cliche, but I owe almost everything I am to my mother. It's true that I wouldn't be a quarter of the person I am without her influence. As a child of an early divorce, my mother became one of the largest influences in my life. I'm positive it wasn't easy to raise me. Trust me, I live with myself on a day to day basis and I am all too aware of how stubborn, loud, talkative, and opinionated I can be. But somehow, as she was struggling to regain her very own footing, she taught me how to find mine. My mother is the type of person who picked up extra nursing shifts to buy her daughter those coveted white lace-up high heel boots. The type of person who seamlessly transitioned from ordering all her clothes out of expensive magazines to not buying a single clothing item for herself for many many years. She is the type of person who never pitted me against my father, but instead spent hours making sure I knew I was loved by both of them. She never made me feel guilty, responsible, or the cause of my parents divorce, though I am all too aware that my existence permanently changed the dynamic of the household. My mother is the type of person who claims to be too judgmental, too opinionated, not very nice and yet still manages to make everyone feel right at home. Growing up, the tough (for me) fact is that my friends only came to hang out at my house to visit with my mother. She has this way about her, this tone, that makes you immediately open up and begin spilling your soul. My mother is the type of person that has always fought for the underdog and never taken wealth and prestige seriously. She is the reason that I won't let my friends use the words "retarded" or "gay" as replacements for stupid. She is the reason that I can't stand when people are judged on their looks instead of their intelligence. SHE is the reason I can't stand when people look the other way when someone is suffering. My mother is the reason I know what compassion means. The reason I know what Grace and Forgiveness mean. She has always been there to remind me to believe in people, even against all odds. She has always reminded me that I need to believe in myself as well. My biggest cheerleader and my biggest critic. My mother is still the most consistent person in my life to date. There has never been a single moment where I have felt that she doesn't love me. Despite our many fights during my teenage years, I rested assured that no matter how much pushing back I did, she would never push me away. Years later, we still don't always see eye to eye, but I love the fact that I never have to walk on eggshells around her. I am never afraid that I might say something too forward, too opinionated, demand too much, reveal too much; I know she will never walk away from me. She is my mother and I am her daughter. Recently my mother moved hundreds of miles away from me. Away from the town I grew up in, away from the rest of her family, because for the first time in almost 21 years, she began to think about her own needs again. Failing health left her looking for a warmer place to live, and I knew that in order to even think about moving far away from me, she must have been in a lot of pain. Still, she asked me several times if I was ok with her moving and made me promise that I would tell her if I needed her to stay. Not just once, but many many times. Each time, I reassured her that I wanted nothing more in the world than for her to start taking care of her self, for her to be just the smallest amount of selfish, for her to recognize that she had sacrificed herself for my sake for much too long. Before she moved away, she and I got semi-matching tattoos. Behind our right ears, we have the script for mother and daughter respectively in Hebrew text. Wherever I go in life, whatever I do, and no matter how far away we find ourselves- She will always be my mother and I will always, always be her daughter. I love you mom and I am eternally grateful for the woman that you have been and continue to be.

Ubuntu

"If I diminish you, I diminish myself"

In my culture and tradition the highest praise that can be given to someone is, "Yu, u nobuntu," an acknowledgment that he or she has this wonderful quality: ubuntu. it is a reference to their actions toward their fellow human beings, it has to do with how they regard people and how they see themselves within their intimate relationships, their familial relationships, and within the broader community.Ubuntu addresses a central tenet of African philosophy: the essence of what it is to be human.The definition of this concept has two parts. The first is that the person is friendly, hospitable, generous, gentle, caring, and compassionate. In other words, someone who will use their strengths on behalf of others- the weak and the poor and the ill- and not take advantage of anyone. This person treats others as he or she would be treated. And because of this they express the second part of the concept, which concerns openness, large-heartedness. They share their worth. In doing so my humanity is recognized and becomes inextricably bound to theirs.

People with ubuntu are approachable and welcoming; their attitude is kindly and well-disposed; they are not threatened by the goodness in others because their own self-esteem and self-worth is generated by knowing they belong to a greater whole. To recast the Cartesian proposition "I think, therefore I am,"ubuntu would phrase it, "I am human because I belong." Put another way, "A person is a person through other people," a concept perfectly captured by the phrase "me we." No one comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think or walk or speak or behave unless we learned it from our fellow human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human. The solitary, isolated human being is a contradiction in terms. 

Because we need one another, our natural tendency is to be cooperative and helpful. If this were not true we would have died out as a species long ago, consumed by our violence and hate. But we haven't. We have kept on despite the evil and the wars that have brought so much suffering and misery down the centuries. We have kept on because we strive for harmony and community, a community not only of the living but also one that honors our forebears. This link to the past gives us a sense of continuity, a sense that we have created, and create societies that are meant to be for the greater good and try to overcome anything that subverts our purpose. Our wars end; we seek to heal.

But anger, resentment, a lust for revenge, greed, even the aggressive competitiveness that rules so much of our contemporary world, corrodes and jeopardizes our harmony. Ubuntu points out that those who seek to destroy and dehumanize are ALSO VICTIMS- victims usually, of a pervading ethos, be it a political ideology, an economic system, or a distorted religious conviction. Consequently, they are as much dehumanized as those on whom they trample.

Never was this more obvious than during the apartheid years in South Africa. All humanity is interlinked. Thus, the humanity of the perpetrators of apartheid was inexorably bound to that of their victims. When they dehumanized another by inflicting suffering and harm, they dehumanized themselves. In fact I said at the time that the oppressor was dehumanized as much as, if not more than, those oppressed. How else could you interpret the words of the minister of police, Jimmy Kruger, on hearing the death of Black Consciousness leader, Steve Biko, in prison. Of his tortured and painful killing, Kruger said, it "leaves me cold." You have to ask what has happened to the humanity- the ubuntu- of someone who could speak so callously about the suffering and death of a fellow human being.

It was equally clear that recovering from this situation would require a magnanimousness on the part of the victims if there as to be a future. The end of apartheid, I knew, would put ubuntu to the test. Yet I never doubted its power of reconciliation. In fact I often recalled the words of a man called, Malusi Mpumlwana, an associate of Biko's, who, even while he was being tortured by the security police, looked at his torturers and realized that these were human beings too and that they needed him "to help them recover the humanity they [were] losing."

This is the essence of ubuntu, or "me we," and it is expressed so poignantly in the life and actions of Mahatma Gandhi. His ubuntu showed that the ONLY way we can ever be human is together. The only way we can ever be free is together. 

-Desmond M. Tutu
[Taken from the book Peace]  

: If only we could all read this, believe it, live it. What a glorious world it could be. 

Every beginning is another beginning's end.

This blog begins with a line through another phrase on my to-do list. Hopefully it will end with a smile and knowledge of the encouragement it has given, the laughter it has brought, and the small whole it has filled in my life. Only time will tell. What I do know is this: Life is beautiful. People are beautiful. People are full of infinite worth and each day that passes by reminds me of the incredible amount of blessing I have been given. My life is not perfect, in fact, my life has been filled with ups and downs. Unmet wants and desires. Broken dreams and broken hearts. A lot of laughter and irony but even more grace and love and beauty. This is my journey. This is my thank you. To all of you who inspire me each day. To the couple wearing matching TMNT backpacks in front of me as I sip on a bloody mary at Ryans's pub. To the elderly couple reminding each other which dressing they like while at my table at Red Lobster. To the young child at the Mill City farmer's market who really liked her dumplings and was devastated to lose them to the concrete ground. To all of the "normal" and "abnormal" people out their who push me to keep pressing on, without ever knowing it. This, This is my thank you.