Life Upside Down

The other day I did something that I haven't done in years! I laid on the couch with my legs in the air and let my head hang over the edge so that when I looked around, everything seemed upside down. The dining room chandelier poked from the ground and Waldo played with his kong on the ceiling. After a while, Waldo just started looking at me while I was watching him sit on the ceiling. Then I looked out the window at the upside down tree & laughed. Quite a silly thing to do.

Sometimes life seems a little like that when you think about it. I notice it a lot now that I'm going to be graduating soon. People ask me what I'm  going to do after school & where I'm going to work. We have a tendancy to talk about ourselves in reference to our work. To me it seems like such an obsurd idea. We talk about work like it's one of the central things that define us, meanwhile I've never heard of anyone on thier deathbed saying, "You know, I spent too much time with my family, I wish I would have worked more." 

What does work lead to? It leads to money which generally leads to stuff, which eventually wears out & breaks. (Side note: I'm not in anyway denying the fact that money can be used to help people, I'm just making a general statement.) So if we define ourselves by our work, then in an extension we can define ourselves by our stuff. Look in the media, especially advertizing. The emphasis is mostly on stuff, specifically getting bigger and/or better stuff. 

When stuff breaks, it eventually ends up in a landfill. Sometimes society does that to broken people too. Society can just push them away & I think it's sad. Material things eventually break down & lose their meaning, but it doesn't have to be that way with people. In a way, people are simple to fix. When it boils down to it, when you show someone love or kindness they regain a bit of what was lost. I'm not saying it's that quick, it happens over time. But what if we all shifted our focus from work & stuff to caring for people? What a world that would be...

Practice Makes Perfect

I have a ten and a half month old kitten. His name is Waldo. Half the time I call him Booger, because he always has sleep in his eyes. He is a long haired tuxedo cat with a black nose with black dots on either side which makes him look like he has a mustache. He also has a puffy squirrel tail, which he proudly holds strait up in the air as he walks. He claims anything he can get his paws on & carries his trophies to the upstairs bathroom where he generally chews them to death. He can be incredibly sweet & funny, but he is also Mr. Mischief. He is also a great teacher. Every day Waldo helps me learn how to love.

Forget all the feel-good moments & all the weddings you've heard this passage read & really take a look at it.

 ⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
 ⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.- 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (NIV)

 Love is not some gushy, warm fuzzy feeling. Love is an action, a choice. Look at the words & the concepts here. Patience, kindness, being humble, forgiveness, selflessness, endurance. Sacrifice. Love is sacrifice. These are not things that appear out of thin air, nor are they things that can be passively learned. These are all skills that must be practiced. Having Waldo in my life is practice for other things. Waldo is the thing in my life that I sacrifice for every day. I'm single, I don't have children or a family of my own or aging parents to care for that rely on me day to day. Yes, I'm there for my friends when they need me. Yes, I love my family & help out in any way I can. However, for the most part I have no one who I am accountable to or responsible for on a day to day basis. If I want to, I can do what I want whenever I want & my money is mine to do with what I please. But this is not what I want.

I want to practice selflessness because one day I will have people who I will be directly responsible for & I want to practice loving now so I can love them better. Because of this I choose to love Waldo. I choose to spend my money giving him good food, a safe home, & excellent veterinary care instead of buying the new pair of heels that I most desperately want. I choose to love him when he kills my favorite bikini & chews my gold hoops into an unrecognizable crinkled mess. But I also have rewards. He greets me every day when I come home & makes me laugh when we play catch. Waldo teaches me that even though love has sacrifice it also has rewards. One day I will have children. I will wake up in the middle of the night to tend to them & they will probably accidentally brake some object that means the world to me. I will sacrifice my time, money, & in some cases my treasures for them but I will receive the joy of being in their lives. They will teach me to laugh in a new way & smile bigger than ever before. And when these things come to pass I will thank God that he used a mischievous little kitten to help my practice the skills involved in love to pave the way.

Waldo getting into something he shouldn't

Relaxing on his favorite spot on the couch

I think I have a book crush on Antoine...

There was a flaw in my logic when I started out today. I have a dentist appointment today & instead of driving across town twice, I decided to eat lunch at Green Bean & read for a few hours before my appointment.  It makes sense, except I'm reading "Wind, Sand, and Stars" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. It's one of those books that you can't just sit down & read for the afternoon. Saint-Exupery has this magical way of writing where he tells one story and makes this unexpected point or observation about humanity in such a way that it's almost blinding every time. You can't just read such a book continuously, it must be taken in chunks. Every time I read a bit of his works, I have to think on it. It's the most amazing sensation, reading something by him, because it fills you with such awe and all these thoughts and you get stuck on them to the point of stillness. Yes, I am swimming in all these thoughts and yet I feel perfectly still.

 If I had a magical time machine & could speak french, I would jump back in time in a heart beat to speak to Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I would gladly sit in a cafe in France with him and talk about anything. I have a feeling that to just talk about the weather with him would turn into an extraordinary conversation. That's the thing I love about books, they're like a crystallized moment in time. Even though I cannot have coffee with my favorite author, I can read his books and have a small look into his world. You can get to know some authors through their works and feel like they are old friends. Sometimes, in some strange way, I feel that those who would understand me the most are these authors who have left this world long ago. There are days where I walk around this life feeling just slightly out of place, however I have never seen this as a bad thing. I prefer to live in my world of wonder, where ideas are my play things & everything is lit with imagination.