I think that it is healthy to always have
someone in your life who you look up to.
Someone who inspires you,
who you hope would be impressed by you, who you'd like to share
coffee and small talk with. Someone who you desire to be proud of
you, who you learn from constantly, who you'd love to get inside
their head and ask tons of questions about skills and expertise that
they possess that you have barely breached the surface of
understanding. I think it's important to stay inspired in life. To
look at your current circumstances and situations and ask yourself,
"is there more good to gain out of this experience than bad?"
If so, keep going. If not, why are you still in that situation? Like
your job for example. Yes, there are hard parts about it. But if it
was easy all the time, would that be healthy? What if there were no
challenges during your day? Then you might stop feeling and
experiencing emotion- then you might grow numb. And if you are
numb-- are you truly living? Isn't living supposed to be
experiencing life to its fullest- through its ups and downs? Good and
Bad?
I haven't always been able to feel the
ups and downs of life- all of it's emotion and trials and joys.
There was a time in my life when I felt numb and comfortable, but
miserable. Thank God I am not living there any longer.
If I mess up on my practical final in my first ever culinary class
because I was told spontaneously to grill a chicken breast, and I've
never grilled before in my life, I can literally feel in my gut the
sense of dread and nervousness accompanied with pressure of figuring
this grilling process out (lesson learned : allowing the grill to warm up is crucial, I will remember this for the rest of my life). When I fail to achieve proper
"cross-hatch" marks on my chicken breast, I stand there and
ponder how to make my chicken still look presentable through
improvising my sauce to go over it. When I get my feelings hurt by
someone, I feel tears sting my eyes and I hold back pure, solid
sadness, only to release it later when I am alone and ok with the
flood of emotion that is begging to come out. When I cook my
grandmother's cornbread correctly in our oven (that never decides what
temperature that it wants to be on any given day), I am flooded
with joy as I watch my husband consume it graciously and hungrily,
and I think about the cornmeal and the buttermilk that made this
bread and I am overjoyed that it is nourishing his body. When I
scrub the bathroom and remove a visible dirt ring in our shower-all
with a little elbow grease and an sos pad, and I look at the day-and-night, before-and-after difference that I was able to make by putting
effort into it- and I feel tired but happy because my mom will be in
town in 2 days and she would end up scrubbing it herself if it
didn't- I smile. And lastly, when I am cutting up limes and talking
with a friend who has no reservations of sharing her entire heart
with me, even though we just met, and I feel parts of me come alive
in the presence of raw honesty and new discovery of a companion- it
fills my soul.
Life is full of good and bad, ups and
downs. Last week was cold, icy and overcast, and I was filled with
worry and irrational fear for much of those days. This week has been
sunnier and warmer, and my finals are over and some new discoveries
about direction in life and breakthroughs in relationships have been
made, and I feel flooded with peace and joy. My joy would not be as
amplified if my sorrows were not as deep. I am thankful for both.
