Awash With Wonder

Nobody is Happy All of the Time

2013-05-23T15:23:00.000-07:00

They're just not. Happiness is overrated. I am happy when I'm eating some kind of coconut confectionery but I'm also happy when I call someone and their voice sounds like home. While they are both great experiences, they are not of the same importance. And yet they fall under the silly, inadequate and overused word "happy".

Happiness has become synonymous with so many things -- achievements, arrivals, possessions. But those things can't possibly encompass or provide happiness forever. Happiness is an emotion, and emotions are only ever experienced for a finite amount of time.

No matter what we have or where we are, we're always trying to be happier. We have convinced ourselves that everyone else possesses a little more happiness than we do. When we are happy, it's almost as if we earned it. It's a prize. We never covet someone else's sadness though. We never want to be sadder. But sadness is an emotion just as much as happy is.

The problem is that we don't see ourselves as feeling something; instead, we are something. I understand. Sadness has a way of sucking the life force out of everything. We can feel so physically drained that we become our sadness because there isn't anything else to be. Sadness is all we salvage from the wreckage of ourselves.

But sadness is an emotion. We feel sadness and we feel happiness, too. Both are fleeting. We can't be sad forever anymore than we can be happy forever because we'd have to be robots to achieve that. The key is to realize the difference between what we feel and who we are. In doing so, we give full weight to every one of our emotions, recognizing that they are the experiences and expression of our unconquerable selves without giving any of them too much significance.

Circumstances affect our emotions but they do not have the ability to affect our core -- unless we allow them to. So what we feel cannot define us without our permission. At our core, I believe we are much more than happy. We are more enduring, powerful, hope-full (as in full of tangible evidence of hope; we are the reason for hope to exist) than any emotion.

I remind myself of my core whenever I can with what can be called affirmations but I prefer to think of them as unquestionable truths. They can take any form; the only requirement is that they are not dependent on any external circumstance. My favorites? I am whole. I am beloved. I am okay.

I don't know about you but I'll take being whole over being happy any day of the week.

What are Your Unquestionable Truths?

Comments

so very right, thank you writing this :) by D http://www.blogger.com/profile/01992471079216649793
"Happiness is an emotion, and emotions are o... by Erika @ CHiMERiKAL.com http://www.blogger.com/profile/01079473916722620673
It seems that you keep posting things I need to re... by onebreath http://www.nowherelife.com

Radio Silence: A Growing Period

2013-05-16T13:06:00.000-07:00

Whenever I'm absent from posting for a while, I feel a bizarre need to apologize. I suppose it's the same as not calling a friend; the longer it takes to call, the more awkward it becomes to just make the phone call without offering a lot of excuses. But I know my friends would probably rather have a phone call than excuses and blog readers would rather have content than apologies. I don't really have inspirational content right now though. I do have my life, so I'm just going to share what I'm learning.

I didn't schedule any posts for this week because my boyfriend is moving to California and I've been trying to spend all my spare time with him. What's been so weird about this experience is that I expected everything else to fade into the background in the face of this humungous event...but that didn't happen. Turns out I still have to go to my classes and my internship and nanny twin boys, and he still has to arrange for his entire life to be transported to the other side of the country. We can't just drop everything to gaze into each others eyes and make the separation as dramatic as possible.

Life goes on. This is both a good and bad thing. I am glad because I am no longer someone whose entire existence is dependent on someone else; no matter how much I adore him, there are elements of my life unconnected to him and important to me. But my tendency to schedule every single moment of my time became apparent in this situation. I think I'm afraid of having empty hours in the day where I'm not proving my productivity or worth and, because of that, I don't leave time for the unexpected or for people. I've designed my life so that people can come in and out of it without disrupting me in a big way, and I'm missing the deep sense of connection I could have if I was vulnerable. Scheduling serves as a defense. It's not what I want. But where do I start and how do I decide what's important and what's not? The problem with being ambitious is that I often don't leave much room for anything else in my life but my all consuming goals.

On the subject of goals, my current internship is a definite step towards my goals. I am the strategic digital communications intern (yeah, I don't know what any of that means either, but it sounds fancy, right?) and I love it. Or rather, I really like it. It's the first time I've used writing in a business sense. Although I don't get to write with the poetry I do in my personal writing, I get to see how my skills could actually support me. That's the biggest fear for writers, isn't it? That noone will ever pay us. While I can't see myself writing "phenomenal" (the word of my direct supervisor, which I thought was a bit of a stretch) copy for dentistry for the rest of my life, it's nice to have even a little bit of a clue what I'm going to do when I graduate. I would love to be a storyteller. It is my passion. But I've discovered that I am better at the telling than I am at the imagining. So writing fiction isn't in my immediate future. The problem is that I don't want to be the subject of my work, but I don't really know what I want the subject to be.

I don't know. I think storytelling is the best kind of writing because it's not selling anything. I am so sick of how everything has to be selling something. But then I can't ignore it completely, because how will I eat? Trying to be creative without selling your soul has got to be one of the biggest dilemmas humans face. If someone's got it all figured out, please tell me how.

So I haven't been writing because I'm in this period where I am so blissfully confused that the thought of creating seems insane. I've been consuming literature. I've been reading everything in the hopes that greater writers than I will inspire me. Although I am confused and I am asking big questions about life, I am content. I feel like only good things are coming and that even having questions means that life is always going to be an adventure. There's always going to be some kind of mystery and I don't have to figure it all out now.

What's happening in your life?

Comments

What a great comment. And Shannon I can definitely... by Erika @ CHiMERiKAL.com http://www.blogger.com/profile/01079473916722620673
You make such a good point. I think it's the r... by Shannon Butler http://www.blogger.com/profile/10957204315457306959
"Trying to be creative without selling your s... by Lynda Meyers http://www.blogger.com/profile/08465209532094281290
Blissfully confused...love it. It's good to ta... by Rachel @ Existation http://www.blogger.com/profile/09591104586815456807
I am really impressed with your ability to write s... by Julie http://www.blogger.com/profile/11770584904613096203
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What You Offer is Valuable

2013-05-09T03:59:00.000-07:00

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I walk into every situation where I'm going to be judged (first dates, jobs interviews) knowing one undeniable fact: what I have to offer is valuable. This is true for you, too.

In some categories you may feel like you can barely identify yourself as average, but in an important few, you are Superb. Excellent. Gifted. You have specific gifts to offer in every new endeavor or relationship. Other people's acceptance or refusal has no bearing on whether those gifts are worthy. Rejection is just an indication that the people you're offering your gifts to are not the right fit. What they have to offer will not compliment what you do.

Every relationship is a process of creationYou are building something together, whether it be a business or a life. You want to be in relationships that are mutually beneficial, which means having a shared vision and the combined skills to implement that vision.

In every situation where you are offering yourself to someone, you, too, should ask: what do they offer?

We are quick to think we are not good enough. This is a lie we tell ourselves so often and in so many situations that it begins to appear true. It isn't. You're talented; you're enough. In fact, you're more than enough.

On that note: other people being talented in areas you are not does not make you unworthy. Comparison doesn't do anything but limit you. If someone intimidates you, choose to let them inspire you. Work with them. Complement their talents. Life, surprisingly, doesn't have to be a competition and you don't have to constantly prove yourself.

When a prospective beau or employer doesn't want me, it doesn't rock my equilibrium for more than two seconds. I want me. You should want you, too. You are valuable and what you offer is importantRejection gives you the opportunity to find people who recognize your talents and whose talents you recognize.

Identify the moments when you feel most energized, passionate, alive -- that's where your talents lie. Tap into that and you'll walk into every new relationship knowing that you bring life. And that's undeniably valuable.

Comments

:) I don't really have words. I just really ... by Erika @ CHiMERiKAL.com http://www.blogger.com/profile/01079473916722620673
Your post is really inspirational. It is so easy ... by Kaeley http://www.blogger.com/profile/02528526070264454504
Wow, this post really felt like a self-esteem boos... by Sofie http://strikeaprose.net
Simply put - I needed this post. Every word. Tha... by onebreath http://www.nowherelife.com
I struggle with overextending myself, too! I never... by Shannon Butler http://www.blogger.com/profile/10957204315457306959
Being worthy. I think that's something I used... by RitaMarie http://www.blogger.com/profile/11421811483942067052

Finding Faith in Strangers & Little Else

2013-05-06T04:00:00.001-07:00

When the uncertainty of my future or, more specifically, the sometimes resplendent pointlessness of everything I might ever want to do begins to overwhelm me, my mind returns to a man I did not exactly meet. (This is not a love story, I promise.)

At nineteen, I agreed to drive eight hours to Atlanta with the mother of a boy who’s solemnly whispered forevers had ultimately only been verbal forget-me-nots: pretty but perishable. The hours of the drive were mostly silent as she did not believe in listening to the radio. On this journey, even the mundane choices were not considered by the standards of personal preference, and, instead, promoted to the mystical realm of belief. Our trip was all about faith. She was guiding us towards a conference room in which a man would act as the intermediary to a Higher Power. When we arrived, the stark fluorescent lights of the room and its bleak inhabitants did more than unsettle me. It offended me. Where was the beauty, the mystery, I associated with the otherworldly in this badly-lit room? The sadness emanating from all the people packed in there hoping to find escape from or meaning in their lives of quiet desperation did not inspire faith in me; they made me want to scream.

We were to march into that room twice a day, while a religious leader, using his own fallibility as evidence of his right to guide us, promised wealth, blessing and healing if only we would believe (and buy his piles of merchandise). Even the word conference was misleading. We were not conferring, we were fish, mouths agape, gasping for water and settling for vinegar. She went because her life-blood was replenished by these meetings. I went because I wanted to believe I was still able to put my faith in something improbable just because it moved me.

I was not moved by much in those days. Instead, I felt that some indistinguishable part of me was moving faster than I was prepared to follow. I had taken to talking all the time. Words tumbled over each other in a vain effort to influence the uncontrollable current carrying parts of myself away. In allowing words to gush out of me, I think I believed I could wash away any traces of the past even as I dissected every morsel of it for sustenance. In a brief respite from the silence which permeated our drive, I began to lament my choices. Mostly, I wanted to express my regret at having sex with her son -- even though I loved him -- because I was trying to convince myself that my sexual wantonness was the reason our relationship was not impervious to breaking. Utterly bizarre reasoning and our conversation reflected it: I could not use the word sex or say anything as brazenly as I felt it.

With the guilt peculiar to those raised religiously, I was ashamed to admit the loss of my purity. I was coached to believe that a girl's purity was her very best asset and that I was somehow less desirable without it. To lose one's sexual innocence could not be covered by the umbrella of absentmindedness that included occasionally misplacing one's keys; instead, it was a flagrant abandonment of morality on par with bedding the devil himself. I didn't really believe it, having lost my virginity years before, but I was desperate for the crack in our relationship to be caused by something I did instead of by who I was. Prayer could not erase a fault as inherent as the color of my eyes or the lilt of my laugh. I wanted forgiveness but feared I needed rebirth.

When I wasn't talking, tears would pour out of me unbidden. At lunch, after sitting through another dismal morning in which everyone around me appeared to be replenished by the words of the speaker while I was left wanting, I struggled to appear happy. I didn't want to become someone marked by sadness. Still, I cried. She looked at me helplessly, having long ago run out of the words to comfort a suffering I clung to like a life-preserver. I wanted my sadness to be bigger than the cliché of a first heartbreak, so I allowed it to evolve into an existential crisis. I didn't know who I was or where I was going and I hadn't found any answers in Atlanta or our reason for being there.

There was man sitting a few tables over. I noticed him when we first entered because he was striking. He was dressed impeccably, the contours of his tailored suit highlighting the masculine grace I strangely associate with stallions and men I find beautiful. At odds with his clothing were his dreadlocks, neatly restrained but still trailing down his back. They hinted at wildness more appealing than the static room, devoid of mysticism, I'd spent my weekend in. I noticed him only for a moment before returning my gaze inward, reluctant to allow myself the pleasure of enjoying beauty just for its own sake.

The waitress approached bashfully, clearly not wanting to intrude on the intimacy of my sadness. She placed two champagne flutes next to my abandoned lunch plate along with an unopened bottle of champagne. From the man in corner she said, as she handed me a note. I noticed your tears. I hope that you spend the rest of the day remembering all the reasons you have to smile and the rest of your life walking into the beauty set aside for you. No contact number, no request for anything in return, and when I looked up, he was gone.

I think of him sometimes, not as a missed connection but as the exact connection I needed at that moment. His kindness allowed hope to bloom in me and, with it, a faith I hadn't known before. Not faith contingent on the religion of my parents or the stranger in the ugly room, but on people. For all the ones that break us there are others just waiting for the chance to put us back together.

Comments

Interesting! He seemed like a businessman, that... by Shannon Butler http://www.blogger.com/profile/10957204315457306959
For some reason the mentioning of the man's dr... by Fairbanks and I http://www.blogger.com/profile/10899959426383779707
What a beautiful story. by Nikkiana http://www.blogger.com/profile/08769877554857471397
I love this!! It brought me to tears. So insightfu... by Anonymous
oh what a beautiful story. and what beautiful word... by D http://www.blogger.com/profile/01992471079216649793
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Writing & Living to Touch People

2013-05-03T04:00:00.003-07:00

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"It's all in the art. You get no credit for living."

V.S. Pritchett

Writing requires many years of apprenticeship. So does living with intention.

The memoir I'm writing this summer is about mothers. I thought it was about immigration. Then relationships. Then family. Finally, I realized it was always about mothers. My insight has grown the more I've thought about the stories I want to tell and what they're all actually about.

I was thinking over my first chapter, in which I detail saying goodbye to my mother in England and, a few years later, walking into a new bedroom where a new, surrogate mother was waiting. I realized that those scenes were connected by more than just the idea of mothers; they're connected by my behavior: I was incredibly selfish.

That realization is an insight I wouldn't have if I was writing at the time of the events. The separation between who I am now and who I was then allows me to write a much richer story. It's why we tell stories years after they take place.

We write to impart insight and readers are connected to writing by those insights. That's why they care and why they read. Great writing reveals insight without ever explicitly stating them.

The insight informs everything I write in that chapter, but I will never say "I was selfish". What would those words mean to you, as a reader? Very little. You'd probably glance over them without registering their importance. Instead, I have to show you. I have to make you feel my selfishness. Then it becomes a truth that you know as opposed to empty words I force upon you. It becomes something you discovered yourself even while I, as a narrator, fail to see it in my own actions. You may even begin to think about a time when you unknowingly behaved selfishly and then it becomes a story about you as much as it is about me. You start to care.

This lesson applies to life, too. What if we allowed our actions to resonate with an intention that words alone cannot convey? I can tell you "I love you" a million times a day, but those words will begin to mean nothing at all if my actions don't support them, if you cannot feel my love. I can also say "I'm kind" or "I have empathy", or I could never make those statement about myself at all. Instead, I could choose to act in a way that speaks to those words.

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

How many times have you heard someone make a sweeping statement about themselves that you've see no evidence of? We can choose not to be one of those people. It starts with an insight or intention and then asking ourselves: does this action convey my intention? This is how we show people who we are and how we become who we want to be.

Comments

Great post. This is exactly the reason why I hate ... by JR Riel http://driftersblog.com
I believe we sometimes do things, too, without rea... by onebreath http://www.nowherelife.com

Don't Yuck My Yum

2013-05-01T04:00:00.002-07:00

At summer camps, there's a rule the kids are taught on the very first day: don't yuck anyone else's yum.

Basically when someone shares something they just adore, the kids are encouraged not to say: Gross! That's the worst, who in their right mind would like that?! Because that's rude and it stops any further conversation. Why would a kid share anything else they hold close to their heart if someone's going to be yucking all over it?

We -- as is the case with lots of important childhood lessons -- forget this as adults. We're so intent on sharing our opinions that we forget that we don't have the last say on everything in the Universe. People are allowed to like other things; they're even allowed to really like things we don't care for! Weird.

So, the next time someone says they listen to Nickelback all day everyday, I'm not going to be like that's totally weird and lame bro, haven't you heard no one does that anymore? Instead, I'll share a band I like and maybe that'll lead to a discussion where we discover we both like some other band, cementing us as BFFL's.

Or maybe we won't find a single band we both like. It doesn't matter. We don't always have to have things in common to talk to each other. We can talk just to listen and share. Either way the point is to have a conversation without once yukking all over someone else. "Yukking" anyone is just a way to say I'm better than you, and that's definitely not going to make you any new friends.

Comments

haha true... she is laughing all the way to the ba... by Erika @ CHiMERiKAL.com http://www.blogger.com/profile/01079473916722620673
Totally agree with this post. I found you from a ... by RitaMarie http://www.blogger.com/profile/11421811483942067052
Haha, high five! by Shannon http://www.blogger.com/profile/10957204315457306959
I'm glad you stopped by :) by Shannon http://www.blogger.com/profile/10957204315457306959
I think people often don't realize how importa... by Shannon http://www.blogger.com/profile/10957204315457306959
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Like Crazy: The Power of Worry

2013-04-29T04:00:00.000-07:00

A few days after I found out that my student visa may not be extended, my boyfriend and I watched the movie "Like Crazy". It's a story about a British girl who comes to school in America, falls in love with an American boy, overstays her visa in order to be with him and is then banned from America. It follows the depressing story of their separation, their struggle to be together and the ultimate disintegration of their relationship. Obviously it bore striking resemblances to my life (or what my life could be), but after I saw it, I never thought about it again. It made no impression on me.

The same is not true for my boyfriend. Recently he expressed how worried he's been about the uncertainty of my visa situation since we saw that movie. I was so surprised, because I knew that my life would never resemble that movie even if my visa was denied. I wasn't worried about it.

Worrying about events that haven't happened yet is a result of believing there is only one right version of your life -- and that you have to decide in advance what that version will be.

I took all the necessary actions to try and extend my visa, and then I continued to live my life. I applied for summer internships, signed up for classes and searched for jobs in California. I continued to live as if I was going to get the visa. This isn't positive thinking exactly; it's just an active engagement with the present. I was and am on a visa right now so why would I begin to act as if I wasn't? Why would I speak that into my life through my actions? I could have stayed in a suspended state of worrying, waiting for the final verdict on my visa, but doing so would have taken away from the joy of my present. Doing so would have given more power to that event than it deserves.

The day after I had that conversation with my boyfriend, my visa got extended.

If my visa had been denied? I would have cried, probably for a long time. But then I would have packed up my bags and let go of any attachment to what I think my life should be. I wouldn't have gone to England and struggled and fought against what is, trying to force myself into what was or what I thought should be. I know this with certainty because I choose not to be consumed by worry or let fleeting moments of anxiety dictate my life. Whenever I succumb to worry, I imagine every single terrible outcome and my fears multiple by a billion. So I don't do it.

One event (even the huge-oh-my-god-my-life-depends-on-this ones) happening or not happening does not determine the course of the rest of your life -- unless you decide it does. When you think like that, what is worth your worry? What is worthy of stealing your attention from moments you're living right now? Nothing.

The rest of your life doesn't have to be decided right now. Sure, it's normal to plan and hope for certain outcomes but not getting attached to them will save you so much misery. It will also give you the opportunity to just let your life unfold -- chances are the unexpected events will surpass the expected.

Comments

What Words Would You Use to Describe Your Life?

2013-04-26T04:00:00.000-07:00

As an English major, my brain is trained to look for themes. I'm not so great at specifics. The other day I told the employee helping me at Walgreens that I probably ordered my photos at a different Walgreens location, to which she responded: this is CVS. So, yeah, not great at specifics. But I'm great at discovering underlying messages, at looking for stories. So when I think of my life, I often think of what the overarching theme is or will be, rather than specific events.

Recently, I posted this quote to my AWW's Facebook page (I post all the inspirational stuff I love there so the people on my personal page won't judge me for being one of those girls. Whatever, I am one of those girls):

"In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you."

I loved it because of the words "gently" and "gracefully". I want those to be the words that apply to my life. I won't say to myself as a person, because that seems far too specific. But my life? That's a grand, ongoing mystery and I can hope to grow into those words. I can hope that all the small, confusing events will somehow come together into an orchestrated dance of gentleness and grace.

Grace always appeals to me because it is so far from what I embody. I wanted to be a ballerina, but my one semester of ballet in college proved to be horrendous. I am not co-ordinated. I always feel as if I am free-falling through life, knocking over your grandmother's heirlooms on the way. Grace makes me think of those girls who walk into a room and you just know they were born dancers. They glide, float, appear. They have a gentle confidence in their body; every movement is an unrehearsed performance. Instead of me, who occasionally looks at her limbs like where did you come from?!

The idea of gentle grace is so sweet. I am lulled into a state of peace just thinking of what those terms would mean when embodied. To be gentle instead of trying -- always trying -- to bluster and force my way into success. Whatever that means. I suppose into a version of life or myself that I imagine is what I'm supposed to do/ who I'm supposed to be.

To just allow events to unfold. To be graceful. To have every event be infused with an undercurrent of gentleness. It sounds magnificent.

What are the words you'd like to describe or be the theme of your life? Do they already apply?

Comments

Freedom in Boundaries

2013-04-24T04:00:00.000-07:00

Whenever I'm talking food with people and they learn I'm a vegetarian, they always say some version of "oh, you can't have....!" I find their phrasing so interesting: I can't have? I can have. I can eat fifty burgers a day if I want to. I can brush my teeth with bacon if I want to. I can do whatever I want, but I choose not to because I realize there are more important things than what I want at any given moment (to paraphrase Eating Animals). It's not that I can't eat meat, it's that I choose not to.

We all make a lot of choices that set up the parameters of our lives. They create boundaries. The boundaries aren't there to limit us though. Actually, they set us free.

Think about being in a committed relationship. You could be with any number of people. You could choose to be with other people while you're involved with someone. But, most of the time, you will choose not to. It would destroy the intimacy and sanctity of your relationship. You would no longer get to experience the deep love that comes with committing to one person, setting up the boundaries of an intimate relationship and then living within them. Making the decision to break out of those boundaries would limit rather than free you.

By deciding what you will and won't do (rather than what you can and can't do), you create boundaries. In relationships, those boundaries give you the freedom to be vulnerable with another person. You get to experience the liberation that comes in choosing someone and being chosen by someone. It isn't that you can't be with other people, it's that you choose not to.

Language is important. "Can't" suggests limitations, as if an external force is determining your behavior. "Choice" puts you in control of your life. It suggests that your boundaries are self-enforced because they create a life which benefits you.

All the parameters of your life are created by you. Freedom comes in creating boundaries which encourage you to grow or deepen your understanding.

If we were to allow ourselves to be governed only by our impulses, our lives would be a mess. We wouldn't be happy. You might momentarily want to cheat on your partner, but choosing not to is what ultimately gives you happiness. You might want to do any number of things in any given moment, but by choosing not to, you decide not to be at the mercy of impulse. This is freedom.

Comments

Really great and inspiring post! xoxo Aimee bowsan... by Aimee P http://www.blogger.com/profile/05454950453894114918
Very thoughtful post, and one that I wholeheartedl... by Sarai | chiklita.com http://chiklita.com
I am continually amazed at how the language we use... by onebreath http://www.nowherelife.com
Yeah, I find that with the options too! There'... by Shannon http://www.blogger.com/profile/10957204315457306959
This is a really important distinction to make, an... by Rachel @ Existation http://www.blogger.com/profile/09591104586815456807
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Don't Buy The Ticket

2013-04-22T04:30:00.000-07:00

If staying scares you more than leaving does, stay.

Stop running. Be still.

Create a home filled with a pervasive sense of belonging. Don't be a visitor: belong. Plant a garden. Experiment with growing your own food.

Do work you love. Either for yourself or for a company you believe in. Feel good about what you do. Be rewarded by each day that you commit to growing -- in knowledge, as a person -- in your field.

Develop an infectious love for your city. Visit your local parks, feel a connection to the streets that pave your way.

Love people really well for a really long time. Invest in them, commit to them.

Build a community that embodies everything you wish the larger world was.

Create what you're looking for in Bali and Africa and Mexico right where you are -- even if that happens to be some tiny town in Idaho.

Stop imagining that everything you want is somewhere other than where you are. Stop thinking your life will begin when you go somewhere new. It's happening. You are here. Commit.

Comments

Thanks so much :) by Shannon http://www.blogger.com/profile/10957204315457306959
I love your blog. What awesome, inspirational pos... by RitaMarie http://www.blogger.com/profile/11421811483942067052
"If staying scares you more than leaving does... by Keli http://www.awakeninlove.com
Love it!! by Shannon http://www.blogger.com/profile/10957204315457306959
While I tend to push myself to always buy the tick... by This American Girl http://www.thisamericangirl.com
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Exploring San Francisco

2013-04-19T05:00:00.000-07:00

I don't know where to begin so I'm going to start with the most intense feeling I had this trip -- isn't that always the beginning of something? My sister and I originally went to San Francisco because we wanted to see Ben Howard. We both adore his music to an almost insane degree and we were weirdly nervous about going. You know how it can feel like you know someone because you've listened or watched them for so long; often their art exists as the background to pivotal moments in your life...and then you realize they don't know you exist? It was basically that, tangled up with the hope that his live performance would live up to our expectations. He did.

The show was on our very last night, at The Fillmore, roughly forty minutes from the airport, and there was no way we were going to be able to see the whole show and make our late night flight. We spent the time waiting in line nervously trying to figure out what the absolute latest time we could leave was. Once he started, it didn't matter. Worrying about anything just stopped being an option. That's why music is so transcendent -- sometimes it transports you somewhere else, and sometimes it grounds you so firmly in your present life that everything but that moment becomes insignificant. At one point, buoyed by the music, I thought to myself: this the kind of vibration I want to live on forever, the kind I want to contribute to the world. It felt tangible and intangible. An energy, a frequency -- the meaning we're all searching for wrapped up in a pure moment of bliss. It inspired me to create, to generate the kind of energy which makes even the everyday magnificent.

And that's what I mostly took away from this trip: I want to apply the moments of clarity I find when I'm outside my normal routine to my everyday life. Traveling invites me to be curious, to seek out adventure. My sister and I explored everywhere. If we wanted macaroons but they were 45 minutes away? Well, we just got on the bus. No excuses. (And so totally worth it, best macaroons ever). We navigated San Francisco, which is huge, without worrying that we would get lost because wherever we ended up wasn't somewhere we'd been before. Everywhere was where we wanted to be. I want that to translate into my life here in Orlando too: this is exactly where I want to be, what can I discover?

This trip was also important to me because I realized how much I value my sister. Although we share an apartment, we live very different lives so we don't spend a lot of time together, and we haven't been on a trip together since her eighteenth birthday (to the bahamas, three years ago)! It was so fun to explore a new place together, and to just laugh all the time, at everything. Simply, she is the person I love most in the world.

Some trip hi-lights:

We ate the best food ever. California is a vegetarian and conscious-eater paradise. We met up with one of my best friends, who moved to California last year, and caught a ferry to Sausalito. You think California can't get anymore beautiful, and then you find yourself on a little island that looks like it belongs along the coast of Italy. We met up with one of my sister's friends, and went on a breathtaking hike, purposefully choosing to escape the path, scrambling along fallen tree trunks and scaling rocks. Told you I was an adventurer in San Francisco!

We visited a Japanese Tea Garden, tucked away in the Golden Gate Park, and the air felt different in there. Peaceful. Visiting places that are surrounded by trees seriously makes me want to build myself a treehouse; there's a serenity found in being so close to nature that just can't be found in a city. We rented a little three-wheeled yellow car, put on dorky red helmets, and drove around town (at 30 miles an hour) searching for Haight-Ashbury and hoping we wouldn't stall on one of the several huge hills. That didn't happen, but we did try and do a U-turn; it didn't end well! A stranger had to run from the side of the road to push us around when we stalled out in the middle of the road. Apparently what was essentially a bumper car didn't have that kind of turn radius.

I took a million photos and I couldn't whittle them down to the four or five I normally include in a post, so here's a slideshow!

Just as a heads up, I share quotes, videos and links as well as photos and moments from my life (if you're into that kind of thing) on facebook on a pretty regular basis!

Some Thoughts on the Dove Beauty Campaign

2013-04-17T22:03:00.000-07:00

I posted this video on my facebook recently because I found it moving, but if you spend anytime on the internet, you've probably seen it too. It's a Dove Campaign in which a sketch artist draws a woman based on their description of themselves and then again based on the description of someone they just met. Everytime, the strangers description produces a drawing more beautiful, and, for me, more accurate than the one the women described of themselves.

I've read a lot of responses recently in which people are angry about this campaign. And I know I'm supposed to be tolerant and try to see other people's point of view but every argument I've seen against the ad has just made me think...whaaaaaat?

A lot of people seem to want Dove not to mention beauty at all. To do a campaign in which they just ask people about their day or any aspect of their life not related to beauty. And I get where those people are coming from; I don't think our physical appearance is ever the most important part about us. But it is a part of our existence. It influences a lot of our behavior, and to pretend like it isn't a issue is ridiculous. To expect a company which produces beauty products to not want to contribute something positive to that discussion -- which is going on constantly!! -- is ridiculous.

And I think their message is positive. I don't think they're implying that we need other people to validate us, that only when someone else says we are pretty that we'll finally be able to think we are. I think they're just commenting on the very obvious fact that often our version of ourselves is hateful and that we imagine that everyone else sees that too. They don't. I watched that video and thought about my friends who are so unbelievably beautiful but spend their days agonizing over their appearance -- never believing that they are good enough. Their appearance isn't the most important part of them, but we have to acknowledge that their failure to recognize their own beauty is important. It's coloring their whole existence. To say that we shouldn't comment on that ever, that we shouldn't talk about beauty at all is to suggest that all those women who struggle with body image aren't important. We should just ignore them too.

And, for me, the Dove campaign wasn't even about beauty. It was about thinking about yourself in a way that isn't based on truth. Beauty is subjective. We can debate on what's beautiful and what isn't for eternity, but what those pictures clearly showed is that the women did not have an accurate idea of how they looked. It wasn't about getting a stranger to validate you, it was about allowing someone else to point out what you've been missing.

When one of the women comments about how her appearance affects everything, even the kind of parent she was, I was like really? But then I thought about the mothers I've known who constantly comment on the appearance of their children. This is a reflection of them; if those mothers didn't worry about their own appearance, it wouldn't be at the forefront of their thoughts, but those mothers do, and they're raising children who will too.

I find the comments that it was a man doing the sketching and how this is a subtle comment that men always determine women's beauty to be some of the most alarming. This is true sometimes -- maybe a lot of the time -- but I don't think it's true here. Sketching profiles based only on description was the man's profession, and he was really good at it! End of story. Should we just remove men completely from the discussion of beauty? Is a female only scenario the only version we'd accept? That doesn't reflect the world we live in and it would be dishonest.

Finally, it's nice for someone to make positive comments about your appearance. We like it. It doesn't make us vain; it's just nice to have someone combat our often very negative thoughts about ourselves. Personally, comments about what I create or some aspect of my personality stay with me a lot longer, but comments about my appearance do brighten up my day. I don't base my entire self-worth on it, but it's nice.

I wish we'd just allow the video to be nice. Yeah, it sucks that we live in a society that focuses so much on appearance and it would be wonderful if we didn't have to have that conversation anymore. But we do live in that society, and we also live in bodies that we care about, so we might as well try to have as many positive conversations about beauty as we can.

Your thoughts? Do you love it or hate it?

I am who I say I am

2013-04-15T04:00:00.000-07:00

This is a guest post!

I am a rule-follower. If you asked me to define myself, I probably wouldn’t tell you that, but it’s in my nature. I have always done what I am “supposed” to do.

I went to college to get my undergraduate degree, and went on immediately to start a career in the field of education, always having a steady job (if not the most typical work schedule), returning to school several years later to get a Master’s degree in education.

From working with children with special needs to underserved families, who I “was” was defined hugely by what I did. I was an educator and human service worker; I was a helper.

So last summer, when I returned from a 5-month adventure, traveling around South America with my new husband, of course I was going to continue right on that career path. I mean, that’s who I was, right? And I had worked so hard to get to that point. I had spent a tedious year and thousands of dollars in loans to get that graduate degree, and had built up a solid understanding in my field. I was ready to take it to the next level.

But I couldn’t shake this nagging feeling in the back of my head that, while in theory many of these jobs I was applying for did excite me, it wasn’t what I wanted to do at this point in my life.

What I really wanted to do was to focus on my jewelry business.

But who was I kidding? I wasn’t a jeweler. I was an educator, a helper. Other than a few classes here and there, I had no formal training in jewelry-making, let alone running a business.

And what would people think of me? Would my parents, who had encouraged me along my career path and pushed me to go to school, look down on my decision? Would my colleagues think I was crazy for leaving this field in which I had so much potential? Would my friends think I was a phony? Was I good enough to even do this?

After much consideration, many talks with my husband about what this would mean for my career and our finances and would I be challenged enough intellectually, and a lot of going back and forth in my head, I decided to listen to my heart and focus on my jewelry business.

And then inevitably I would find myself in a social situation and that dreaded question “What do you do?” would come up.

Because in my head, what I did defined who I was.

I felt like an imposter telling people I owned my own jewelry business. Surely people would see right through me and know that I wasn’t really a jewelry designer.

So I would mumble something about making jewelry, but I was also working with children with special needs. As if my 6-hour-a-week part-time job was who I was. I was grasping on to something that connected me to how I had defined myself for so long instead of allowing myself to be redefined. And I felt people would judge me for doing something that seemed so out-of-the-box.

But amazingly, I found that people’s reactions have been surprisingly positive. No one called me out. No one questioned me. In fact, people were down right….supportive. Especially my family, friends, and former colleagues.

With time, I have grown more confident in redefining myself. I realized I can choose to define myself as I want, and it is forever evolving.

How do you define yourself?

Bev Feldman is a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a Jewish woman, a helper, a rule-follower with exception, a traveler, a blogger and a jewelry designer (not necessarily in that order). You can read more about her musings on life and being a creative business owner at Linkouture. You can connect with Bev on Twitter at @Linkouture.

When the Currency is Connection

2013-04-10T04:00:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posts this week, I had to write four research paper drafts and I couldn't muster the energy to write anything else on top of those. But! We are celebrating here today!

Awash with Wonder has existed for a year this month. I started it because I read a book by Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers, which said that the difference between successful and unsuccessful people is 10,000 hours. I thought if I could dedicate 10,000 hours to writing, I could possibly become talented at this craft I love. Over two hundred posts later, I've hardly put a dent in those hours, but sharing my writing has changed what writing means to me. It's no longer about how I write or what I write; instead, why I write. For you, for relationship, for connection.

I don't write for money. I don't have an e-book, a small business, or any plans to publish a book; there is no motivation for my writing besides connection. I write to be heard and to be seen. Which, I'm learning, is difficult on the internet -- or perhaps in life -- where everyone is clambering over each other just trying to be understood.

I'm writing a memoir this summer, and yesterday I had my first meeting with the professor who is overseeing it. I outlined the story I hope to tell: the deep bond between women, love that redeems, and how I came to find a home in myself. She got tear-eyed when I explained it, and it just reminded me of the importance of our stories. They connect us in this profound way, but telling them requires a willingness to be vulnerable.

This space is where I am often my most vulnerable. I am able to explore so many aspects of life that are important to me, but that I barely graze the surface of in my everyday interactions. The point of sharing is not just to document my existence or opinions though; I want to engage in conversation. I want to be involved in a community of thoughtful, interesting people who want to talk about everything. That, for me, is beautiful, and all I ever want to do is contribute something beautiful to the world.

I have some posts that I am so nervous to publish, and I spend the day waiting with bated breath for the first comment to let me know how it was received. Sometimes there are no comments, and sometimes there are comments which lead to conversations that make my life feel richer.

There have been 960 comments on this blog so far. I went through some of my old posts to see what those comments look like, and I was warmed to remember the conversations, to see the start of friendships that developed here. I'm going to keep writing in the most authentic way I can as long as it continues to connect me to the community I think is growing here. Thank you if you've ever contributed to the conversation; I miss you when you stop commenting. Every post is an invitation to whatever conversation you want to have -- I want to hear whatever it is you have to say.

In other news, I'm leaving for San Francisco tomorrow for a long weekend. My sister and I are going to see Ben Howard, and I am so excited because we both love his music a devastating amount. The venue is really intimate, so hopefully I'll get to be uncomfortably close to him. Also, if you've been reading a while you know how much I love California (evidenced here, here and here if you're a new reader). I'll be back with a guest post on Monday and then some photos of my trip on Wednesday! Until then, here's my favorite happy Ben Howard song:

And here's one that makes me cry every.single.time:

Best Four Years: My Halcyon Days

2013-04-05T04:00:00.001-07:00

When it comes to college, I've never really got on board with the whole BEST FOUR YEARS OF YOUR LIFE!!! thing. Mostly because that seems like an incredibly depressing sentiment: it's all downhill after twenty-two? No thanks. Also because the people that seem real gung-ho about that statement are normally drunk; I stopped binge drinking when I realized it was leading to questionable decision making, like dating heavily tattooed men who would not admit they were drug dealers.

But as graduation draws closer (August!) I'm starting to realize how much I'm going to miss college.

I learned a term recently "halcyon days" and I can't help but think that the past four years have been my halcyon days -- joyful, happy, carefree. Of course, they're not the last of those days, but they're ones I'll always remember. I moved with my father and my sister to America when I was sixteen. My dad was chasing after the warmer weather his South African blood longed for, but I think he also believed putting oceans between himself and my mother would lessen his love for her. I always think of my parents as running from what they once loved. They have always been consumed with wanderlust, but it is tinged with desperation rather than romance. For a large portion of my childhood, I think they believed happiness was anywhere else but where we were. We moved a lot. Not always as a whole family unit.

America was a particularly difficult move, because I was older and attached to my life in England, but also because we were not financially prepared. By the time I entered college, we had been evicted twice, my father had returned to England several times for work (causing my mother to quit her job and fly over to take care of us), I had finished an entire semester of my senior year online in three days, and I had moved back to England for several terrifying, what-am-I-doing-with-my-life weeks.

I started college in a situation so radically different from the years leading up to it though: I felt safe.

I fell in love with an American boy my junior year of high school. When he moved away for college, he asked his mother to take care of me. Aware of my often chaotic home life, he wanted her to occasionally take me to lunch, maybe call me a few times. He didn't mean invite me to live in their spare room and pay for my college tuition and basically adopt me in every sense of the word. Which is what she did. Four years later, his mother continues to be a mother to me. Thankfully I have my own apartment now. There was an incredibly awkward year and a half when I still lived with them after the boy and I broke up; I am real glad that's behind me.

I am indebted to her and her family for the rest of my life. While I recognize the magnitude of their financial support -- I go to a private liberal arts school I couldn't have dreamed of -- it is their willingness to take care of me, to care about me, when they had no reason to that's changed my life. I was an underachieving, boy-chasing lost soul when I first started college; I am none of those things now.

College has been a time of freedom for me. That used to mean the freedom to get stupid drunk and makeout with the Johnny's and Jake's and Jeffrey's of the world, but for the last two years it's meant the freedom to figure out who I want to be separate from who my parents are. Not because my parents aren't wonderful, loving, flawed people who tried their hardest to provide for me and my siblings, but because I needed the space to imagine a life beyond the limitations of the one they had created for us.

It has been such a relief to just explore who I want to be without overwhelming outside concerns. Of course, there has still been anxiety caused heart attacks over visa issues, and money issues, and life issues, but I felt cared for the whole time they were happening. I knew with certainty that some parts of my life -- education, car insurance, health insurance -- were guaranteed, and I could focus on becoming someone deserving of such overwhelming generosity.

I'm going to miss having the freedom to just explore without the pressure of creating a definite version of myself -- one which has this kind of job, earns this amount of money, marries that kind of man. But I'm also looking forward to creating a life, a version of myself, that isn't easily defined out in the "real world." I'm so glad college was a gift for me, rather than something I expected; it's taught me so much about the unexpected beauty of people and how life can always be so much bigger than I imagine.

Tell me about your college experience? Or a time in your life you consider your halcyon days?

Love in Alaska

2013-04-03T04:00:00.002-07:00

This is a guest post from a blogger, Rebbeca, who I really enjoy reading. I asked her to tell the story of living in Alaska and being in love with a fisherman who is gone for months at a time. Doesn't that sound like a novel?

I'm remembering the day I fell in love with you. It was cold outside, the last blast of winter before spring arrives, just like it is now, as I sit against the window with my fingers curled around a cup of Alaskan chai tea. Breakup will be coming soon - not the tragic romantic kind, but the kind that turns the dirt to mud and ice to slush and the outside smells like decomposed leaves. Everyone makes bets as to when the ice on the Tanana River breaks, down to the minute. But I don't see the ice or the spring - instead I see you, wearing that red hat, your lanky arms swaying by your sides, and I ache to have them around me, to hear your laughing voice and know that though my spirit flies among the clouds, you ground me - my rock, my tree, my solace.

Two years later, I'm sitting in this cold Alaskan spring beginning, waiting for you to come home from crabbing in the Bering Sea. I'll only be able to hold you in my arms for a month before you leave once more to fish halibut until October. And then next year - will I have only three months with you? I know you'll be gone once more, as surely as the wind blows from the east. But I'm an Alaskan woman, and I know how to wait, even if the waiting raises doubts in the back of my shivering mind. I'll curl up my love into a ball and save it for you while I breath this stark air and watch the snow-capped mountains rise over the bay and silhouette themselves against the dawn sky. I'll take comfort in the nesting eagles and the quiet, still, wise presence of the moose in my lawn, greeting me with silent stares and uplifted ears.

"What's it like living in Alaska?" You inquire curiously to me over warm ham and cheese savories and cups of coffee on the deck of the local bakery. Flakes of the pastry fall from your fingers onto the table and I smile wryly. "Cold." You giggle and roll your eyes. "No, really, what's it like?"

I have to pause at that, looking out the window through the lace curtains at the lingering snow at the edges of the garden. The branches of the pine trees quiver slightly, whether from the wind or the expectation of my answer - I didn't know. You're just visiting for a few days, on a stopover on your way to another foreign country. My heart searches for the words to bring the essence of my life here, growing up in this last great land.

"I've told people that you always know who the Alaskans are, because there's a way about them that there isn't in anybody else," I say cautiously, quietly, sipping my coffee, ignoring the hot burn on the tip of my tongue. "Maybe because the people who choose to live here have chosen to live here because they don't mind the way nature bites at their back, both beautiful and threatening at the same time."

I think of the day I went cross country skiing by myself: the way the snow fell in thick puffs onto already thick drifts. How muffled and all-encompassing it was, how I felt a twinge of fear when my glasses kept fogging up and the impossible whiteness blinded me to the trail. How I wondered what it would be like to get lost out there, among the black and the white and silence, and how I felt suddenly a deep sense of peace at the thought, as if the knowledge of my tenuous hold on life made me want to hold on tighter, just to see this quiet beauty a bit longer.

"Living in Alaska makes you question yourself," I whisper, making you lean over to hear me. "It makes you aware of the fact that in everything there are cycles. Even to the ones that have grown up here and want desperately to leave - like me - there is a magic and a wonder in the extremity of the seasons that makes your breath catch and your eyes fill with tears. The first thick snow, the blowing ice, the chaos and unpredictability of spring, the summer that is greener than a rain forest, the shortness of the autumn, yellow and brown and crisp. The towering mountains rising in stark contrast to the blue sky behind them, looking like paper cutouts. The animals, and their ways of life. The cycles of yourself - how in the winter, everyone is more still than in the summer. And the art here - the art! It seems like artists and spiritual-leaning people are constantly attracted to Homer. There is a quality about this place that stirs inspiration and creativity in everyone - perhaps it's the fact that no day is ever the same. The ones that see every day as the same are the ones who haven't taken the time to look, and they're at the radically opposite side of the spectrum from the artists. There is no middle area, no grey area, in Alaskan life.

"Yes," I whisper again. "Living in Alaska makes you question what you really want in your life. Moderation and mediocrity have no place in a land of extremes."

You look at me, your forehead creased, trying to understand what I'm saying, because you have always thought you knew what you really wanted in your life. I see in your eyes the decision not to worry about it, and you shift the subject. "What about your boyfriend? Doesn't it get hard, him being gone all the time?"

I smile and shake my head, not in disagreement but in solemn humor. "Yes, it often does. Sometimes I wonder why we fell in love, when we both are fans of leaving all the time. When he's gone, I can't help myself every so often, when I'm lying in bed alone or walking by the waves, thinking whether or not being with him was the right decision. I wonder if I should have stayed single instead, and continued to roam the world as a solo nomad backpacker. But then I remember his face every time he comes home - how happy he is to see me, how he holds me tightly and reads my thoughts through the pores of my skin, how he knows me better than anyone, and won't let go once until he has to leave again. And I remember how I feel when I see him for the first time - how the emotion wells in my breast.

"That's when I remember why I stay with him, a fisherman. Because I'm an obnoxiously independent person, and with him gone, I'm able to do what I love to do that I enjoy doing when I'm alone - art, writing, spirituality...and then he comes back, and I fall in love with him all over again. That's the magic of his fishing job - I get to fall in love twice a year."

You smile, and the wind outside picks up, battering at the waves and windows for a few moments before changing direction, and everything goes quiet but for the working baristas and bakers and the music. It's cold outside, and I draw my coat closer to my body. I look out at the sea and think of my life here, among the unpredictable weather and the unpredictable people. I watch people coming in and out of the bakery, and I laugh inwardly at their style of dress: carharrts, xtratuffs, grundens, numerous different styles of hippie clothing. Small children wearing dresses and shorts outside. I once heard that Homer, Alaska is the worst dressed town in the world, and often I believe it. But I love our clothing. I love our style. I love our way of life.

And yet, I'm leaving - moving to the tropics in an escape from the cold. I feel the unceasing need in me for a land of different extremities. I want to feel sweat on my brow and the warmth of the sun on my skin. I want to stand on the edge of a volcano and feel a wild, hot destruction rather than a quiet, cold one. I want Madame Pele to help me break myself down and build myself up. But Alaska will always be stitched in my marrow - and I know that I will always return to that cosmic hamlet by the sea, where the land will demand my complete honesty, and the cold will draw my hidden emotions from my soul.

I nodded to you quietly. "What's it like, living in Alaska? Well, it's different for everyone, but for me, it's my cave, where I can lick my wounds and face up my shadow and escape into an uninterrupted silence. It's a place that is shrouded in darkness for half the year, and encased in never-ending light for the other half. It won't let me stay in the middle, but will pull me from one end to the other, until, finally, I let myself go."

Do any of you live in a remote place? In a long distance relationship?

Rebecca Faythe is the resident Bliss Diva of the lifestyle blog Bliss Versus the World. She's an Alaskaustralian and an ambivalent backpacker with a penchant for sunrises, art, and spirituality, and dreams of spending a year in every continent.

Learning to be kind to my body

2013-04-01T04:00:00.000-07:00

You guys!! I learned headstand, and then I added some nifty editing so it would look more magical.

I have believed in some really crazy ideas, but I think the most bizarre is the fallacy that I have to be thin to be happy. And I don't mean healthy, I mean doing whatever it takes to be thin. Which most of the time is physically and mentally unhealthy.

I tell myself that I am being healthier and pushing myself when I begin to obsess over my weight. Obviously I have to step on the scales everyday and run to the gym to do a full workout just to run back. Obviously I can't eat without thinking about the exercises I'll have to do to burn it off. This is being healthy, I tell myself. In reality, this is hating myself. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with having fitness goals, but on the days when I don't exercise I berate myself. I need to be thinner because I will somehow be better as a thinner version of me. And isn't that idea firmly rooted in our conscious no matter how much we resist it? If not thinner, at least a different version of who we currently are.

I am good at making myself exercise. I will cycle seven miles to do an hour and a half of heated ashtanga yoga and then cycle home without thinking about it. I can make myself go on ridiculously long runs several times a week while weight training and doing yoga. The only thing I don't do well is starve myself (thank god) but I'm great at making myself feel absolutely terrible about what I eat. Then I up the ante on the exercise to balance it out. I tell myself that this is being healthy. I convince myself that I am caring about my body, no matter how uncaring my thoughts are or how my good feelings are dependent on how flat my stomach is in the morning.

I began training for a half marathon earlier this year. At first, running was therapeutic. The repetitive nature of running allows me to not think much about the actual exercise, and inspiration will often come to me as my feet are pounding the pavement. Soon it started becoming a punishment though. If I missed a day of running, I would think about all the food I'd eaten and how I hadn't burned the calories. When I was running, I wouldn't celebrate the strength of my body. Instead, I'd be consumed with how I could change it. I'd imagine the pounds melting off with each added mile.

I know that there is a lot to learn in setting goals and achieving them despite discomfort, but I also think we're obsessed with looking a certain way. I can't even read fitness blogs because it makes me uncomfortable that we're trying so hard to mold our bodies into models of perfection; I know how often the motivation to exercise will be kindness and how quickly that transforms into cruelty. It can quickly lead into self-worship and self-flagellation.

I hear my friends talk about their exercise routines sometimes, and I can tell they’re not motivated by a desire to push themselves but rather the terrifying, all-consuming fear of Getting Fat. I want to ask them: who taught us to hate ourselves?

I decided to stop running. It didn't even feel like quitting; it just felt like relief.

Macarons: delicious and should be a weekly staple

In the past when I quit an exercise routine, I punished myself with food. Which sounds awful, but I think we all perform some version of this. My reasoning is that if I'm no longer being "kind" to my body by running it into exhaustion, why be kind to it with food? I will eat copious amounts of terrible food. And I don't mean a cupcake. Cupcakes are delicious, we should all be eating lots of them. I mean the most chemically-laden-doesn't-even-resemble-food item I can find, and then I'll eat eight of them. I'll probably buy them from a gas station. There is no quality control in my reasoning; it must only make me feel bad and I should not enjoy eating it.

Eventually I'll start with the crazy exercise again to combat this, and so continues the vicious cycle on and on into eternity. I'm not doing it anymore.

This time I'm preparing my own food. I don't think about calories or burning it off or punishing myself; I just think about what my body wants, what tastes good, what will nourish me. A lot of it is fruits or vegetables. It turns out I crave those when I'm listening to my body. Sometimes it's a cupcake, but one that's made out of real, no-cancer-causing ingredients. And I enjoy them -- they feel like a treat.

I go to yoga too. My mindset in yoga is different. I don't think about changing my body or using it to achieve some goal. Instead, I want deeper connection. I want my breath and my mind and my body to be in union. It feels like an unbelievable gift; it feels like kindness. If I ever start to believe I have to stand on my head for twenty minutes a day so that all the pounds will drop off, I'll stop.

It's not that any exercise is inherently bad, but my mindset was damaging to me. It was hateful towards my body. I'm always going to encourage moving your body because that connection is important (and endorphins are magic!!) but if your thoughts are cruel instead of kind, you can stop. You don't have to run or go to the gym if you hate it.

One day I'm going to start running again, but only when my mindset resembles Kilian Jornet, an incredible athlete, who doesn't "run with his head down in focused misery but instead brushes the hairgrass and corn lily that grows along the trail with his fingertips and brings the smell to his nose, as if he feeds off the scenery." He does this during competitive races. I go on morning runs like someone is chasing me with a gun: grimly, frightened of stopping. You can tell that running for him is a kindness, an expression of his purest self. That's what exercise should always be.

Your thoughts?

A Collection of Good Reads

2013-03-31T04:00:00.000-07:00

How was your week? I went to Miami last weekend to see David Guetta DJ, and this is the only photo I took! As you can see it wasn't even in the club. The ocean was so, so beautiful and Miami was so, so expensive (like $112 for two drinks expensive). Other than that, I've been hanging out with my sister who returned from six weeks in Australia. We went to see Spring Breakers and I can honestly say I feel like a worse person for having seen it. It was THE worst movie I think in the history of ever. Have you guys seen it? My sister left again on Friday, for Mexico this time, so I'm back to living solo. It's weird how nice it was to just have someone in the house, even when we weren't in the same room.

Links for this week!

How to write a blow-your-mind manifesto

Dax Shepard wrote a touching and funny post about his father's death: My Father's Horniness

As someone with three sisters, I loved this post

"Laura and Madeline were the country in which I grew up, and although it seemed foreign then, it’s now the most familiar thing I know."

Remember when planking was a thing that people did? Well, Japan blew that out the water.

Did you know that most test subjects for psychological studies come from the Western world? And that we assume the results are consistent across all cultures? Why Americans are the Weirdest People in the World

A post from a new favorite addition to my reader: What are we all competing for?

A photographer documents his wife's battle with breast cancer

Some posts of mine you might have missed: loneliness is not a problem, everything works in perfect order and genius lies in naivety

Living in Denial

2013-03-29T04:00:00.000-07:00

This is the very first guest post on AWW. I would love to have more guest posters. I'm interested in thoughtful essays on any aspect of life -- chasing passions, relationships, spirituality etc. If you'd like to pitch an idea please email me at shannon@awashwithwonder.com

image source

For the past four months, I haven’t watched the news. I have avoided all newspapers and news channels.

For me, the news is an incessant cycle of death, bleak expectations, pessimism, and fear. I told myself that I didn't want to take in that toxicity. I didn't want fear and its companions to find refuge in my thoughts and my life. I wanted to select what could stay in my mind, and I felt by not watching the news I was choosing to be mindful.

I chose to disengage and detach. I delved further into my yoga practice. I read more spiritual self-help books. I swam into my music, letting every lyric and beat drown any disturbance of my lulled living. I gingerly turned on my television, immediately switching the channel to my pleasant and placid recordings of culinary shows. Whenever someone chose to share stories from the news, I was comforted that I could return to my carefully created cave of peace. I didn't need or want that version of reality. I commended myself for choosing what I thought to be a better path and higher way.

Detaching and disengaging usually start as a quest to better ourselves, but they can very quickly morph into denial. When we shut our eyes and close our ears to the world around us, we begin the process of numbing. And when we numb ourselves, we miss the beauty hidden beneath the seemingly bleak. By immediately turning off the TV, avoiding the difficult conversations, neglecting the challenging phone calls, or withdrawing from anything uncomfortable, we never know who we are beyond our fear and trepidation. We remain locked in that initial feeling of fear. We only know the fragility and the anxiety. By refusing to acknowledge those feelings, we don't allow ourselves to act. Sometimes fear is a call to action.

When we deny ourselves the realities of the complexities of life, we also deny ourselves the pleasure of getting to know ourselves. Those challenges force us to face who we believe ourselves to be. When we grow through and feel the fears, we become intimate with our true selves. By moving through those initial responses and emotions, we come face to face with what is underneath all the rubble. Avoiding causes us to believe we are easily broken, fragile. We think we are just a sum of the anxiety and fear and that adding even an ounce more will completely obliterate us.

But by facing the reality of what is, we become acquainted with what is behind the fear and beyond the defenses. We begin to understand the reasons for the barricades. We see that a heart that aches when children go hungry is not weakness, but a desire to make sure even the smallest among us get their basic needs met. The worry about the rise of rape culture is concern about the character of men today --and how we as women can help. The dismay about pursuing a degree because of the lack of job prospects and high unemployment is actually a quest to find and do work that matters -- regardless of the number on the paycheck. Living in denial distances you from the world and yourself. Embracing those feelings -- the hopelessness, despair and powerlessness -- is the exact fuel we need to begin to the ultimate adventure of knowing ourselves.

What are you denying in your own life? Do you follow the news?

Your Life is Your Prayer

2013-03-27T04:00:00.000-07:00

Some synonyms for prayer: plea. beseech. implore.

More: devotion. worship. grace.

We pray when we are overwhelmed -- with fatigue, worry, or gratitude. We reserve it for extreme moments of need or fortune. These moments aren't necessarily directed at our personal deities; they don't require religion or commitment to spiritual practices. They're universal to us all: moments when we acknowledge the poetry of our existence, the need to feel connected to something bigger than we are. They are moments when we beseech or worship at the feet of something, anything outside of our everyday.

We think our big moments of devotion need to be pleas for help -- please, please take this weight from me -- or thanks for blessings -- this is more than I have dreamed -- delivered with symbolism in ceremony. Kneeling at the altar, candles lit, incense burning, meditating on an intention, reciting Ava Maria: this is prayer. We forget about the beauty of our every moment; we forget the grace that exists in our every breath. We forget that words are not the only expression of prayer.

Your life is your prayer.

Everything you do is a devotion. Brushing your teeth, making breakfast, driving to work, holding your kids, kissing your beloved: these are attachments, earnest commitments to living. They can be done with luminous devotion to creating a life overflowing with wonder. Or they can be done distractedly, mind occupied with the mistakes of yesterday or the worries of tomorrow. Your every breath can be a giving of thanks, a testament to abundance, a plea to always be present.

The mundane becomes sacred when you experience everything with mindful intention.

While setting aside intentional time to pray or meditate is necessary, it can also separate you from the present. Expressing gratitude requires you to reflect on the past; asking for help is caused by fear of the unknown future. If, instead, every movement of yours was your prayer, your life would become a reverent commitment to the present. Every minor experience would become mindful, filled with intent and connection. You would always be present.

The key is not "finding time" to meditate or pray; instead, infuse all your time with the same intention you associate with spiritual practices. Live as if everything you do is an expression of your incandescent divinity and your life will overflow with the grace and vulnerability of a hymn, a psalm, a prayer.

Love is Lonely When You Settle

2013-03-25T03:00:00.000-07:00

It is comforting to have someone find you beautiful. When it’s a stranger with an unexpected compliment, it’s momentarily uplifting; but to find someone who not only thinks that your face is designed by their own personal god but that every tiny, forgotten space on your body is a gift from the angels, and who loves you too – well, that’s overwhelming. It’s enough to make you imagine many days with them, this person who finds you beautiful. It’s enough to spend many days with them, to find them beautiful, to love them too.

It isn’t enough to quiet the voice within you insistently chanting this is not enough though.

You feel it in the mornings when they reach for you before they even open their eyes: a wave of enveloping belonging before the crushing tide of otherness. It is feeling without words, only the knowledge that something is not quite right. It’s there at dinner, opposite sides of the booth but hands clasped over the cheap tablecloth; and it’s there on the couch, their kisses light on your forehead and heavy on your eyelids: a feeling of detachment you cannot shake. You have to be constantly touching because in the absence of physical closeness you are so aware of all the ways you are not connected.

Your conversation centers on the ways you love them because talking about anything else is too dangerous. Mentioning your hopes also means admitting that you cannot imagine them in your future, so you try to forget any of your desires outside of the breathless nights they offer you. Even though you trust them with your body, you do not trust them with your fears, so you try to pretend they're not growing. It is safer to talk about the way they make you feel, the comfort of having them touch you, so you try to never stray too far from the cementing reality of fingertips on bare skin.

This is a heavy love, so dependent on their love. A settling kind of love: drifting snowflakes which appear light but with each passing day begin to resemble snowstorm you were not prepared for. A gathering supplies, battening down the hatches, seeking shelter kind of storm; a kind of love that captures more than it sets free.

This is love when you’re settling: a heaviness you were not expecting.

It is so very tempting to hold tightly to, clutch madly for this love. What is the damage of love that brings isolating storms when it also offers someone who will hold you through them?

The idea of being alone when you already have someone -- even when they’re not the right someone -- is so frighteningly lonely. You know you’ll have let them go and there’s no guarantee that you’ll find something, someone else to hold to. You might have to be empty handed for a while. Alone feels so empty when you’re used to filling silences and spaces with someone.

The greatest damage caused by settling is not the missed opportunity to love someone else. That suggests that people are disposable, that we should always be on the lookout for the next best thing. No, the greatest damage is the quiet erosion that happens to you.

Every day that you stay is a day that you did not leave. Which seems so obvious, but imagine where you could have gone. Imagine all the aspects of yourself you could have explored if you weren't trying so hard to fit into the constraints of a limiting relationship.

Settling limits you. It feels like safety but it’s a snow storm; their arms wrapped around you is the only reason you cannot feel the cold. When you start lowering your expectations for the one you share your life with, you start to lower them for yourself too. Why dream about anything big when you've taught yourself to live small? Every kiss you accept from a lover whose love is too small is settling into a life that's too small for you.

You think being alone will be lonely without realizing that you're already lonely -- you're just calling it love.

In fleeting moments, they may make your world feel warmer, but the collection of all those moments is only making your world smaller. Ah, but how you'll love them with a gasping, hungry love, overwhelming the fragile world you've created together. Your hands map their flesh, seek love in the scattered freckles on their chest, and you want to get so close that you settle beneath their skin. You want to be part of them so you won't have to see your indifference, your uncertainty, reflected back at you. You try harder to love better, make it right. You believe if you love more, maybe it will transform into love of abundance instead of scarcity. It doesn't. Love is so lonely when you settle, and you won't even realize it until you stop.

On Bending Without Breaking

2013-03-22T04:00:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, exhausted by the frustration of balancing visa problems, a heavy workload, and my overwhelming expectations for myself, I pathetically exclaimed: "I don't even want to be remarkable anymore; I just want it to be less difficult to live a completely normal life."

Sometimes life will ebb and flow so gently that you barely notice the presence of circumstance, and other times it will crush you with never-ending waves of mediocrity that make you want to become smaller and smaller in the hopes that life, the universe, whoever is sending all this bullshit your way will stop noticing you.

We have to somehow learn to bloom when life makes us want to shrink. This is the key to enjoying ourselves: we cannot become beaten down; we must not become smaller.

In the above photo, I'm doing Vriksasana or Tree Pose. It doesn't look difficult but it's actually surprisingly difficult to keep your balance in this pose. It becomes harder when you close your eyes and raise your arms, spreading them out, and allow your back to bend. Our natural reaction when things become unsteady is to quickly reach for something certain. Sometimes that means reaching for the ground instead of the sky.

In tree pose, I'll lose balance because I feel too big, too exposed, and I immediately try to become as small as possible. I find safety in smallness. So in life, when circumstance becomes more than I think I can bear, I become smaller.

Which, surprisingly, isn't a reaction that's beneficial.

Wanting to be less remarkable or smaller doesn't make any sense. Life is still going to bring it's challenges, you're just not going to have the energy to overcome them. The thing about becoming smaller is that you allow everything else to be bigger than you are. Exhaustion is guaranteed; you can't spend all your time fighting giants, sometimes you've got to be the giant.

Which means being big in your own life, and that translates into bending but never, ever breaking.

In tree pose, you want to be as solid as a tree, deeply rooted in the ground, but you also want the wind to be able to sway your branches. It's the same in life. We have to be deeply grounded in ourselves but we cannot be rigid because we'll snap under pressure. Being rigid in your expectations for yourself or your hopes for life won't allow you to remain intact when change comes. Change requires flexibility in us, and if we don't possess that we break. We become tired and worn down. We surrender.

But that's not our calling. It's never our calling to become smaller; it's always required of us to grow bigger. To bend without breaking.

How can you bend instead of break in your own life?

What Stories are Ours to Tell?

2013-03-20T04:00:00.000-07:00

I'm going to begin writing a memoir in May, which at twenty-two is weird to say. But I have to do an independent study in order to graduate when I want to and as I don't want to study anymore literature (after fours years, I've overdosed on literature!) and I'm not ready to tackle fiction, a memoir makes the most sense. Twenty two years, even though relatively short, is a lot to write about so I'm going to focus on my immigration to America. Six years ago, on uncertain footing, I had to navigate my way through a new country and a labyrinth of immigration laws, and a lot of the time it was scary. Graduating is presenting a lot of the same challenges and fears, so it feels fitting to spend the summer reflecting on my time here. Plus, I just love memoirs. I love them. I'm going to study three -- two that I've already read and one I have not -- in addition to three books on the craft of memoir writing before I begin writing my own.

It's made me think a lot about what's mine to tell. This is my life, sure, but there's a lot of people living it with me and their lives are not mine to do with what I please; I cannot reshape them using a perspective they may not agree with. It feels like betrayal. But I also cannot write about people without being honest -- even fiction is honest when it comes to people. There is a quote floating around the internet from one of my all-time favorite writers, and someone who knows far more about writing than I do, Anne Lamott:

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should’ve behaved better.”

I find it troubling. I do own everything that happens to me, but I don't own the people who experienced them with me. That's a problem we run into with relationships all the time: we think other people agreeing to share life with us in some way is also an agreement to act or be exactly what we expect or want. In a sense, we think we own them.

We don't.

I also think writing about a relationship infringes on the trust you create with someone. Even when the relationship is over, another person's moments of vulnerability are sacred. You shared them, sure, but they were a gift. You can't regift someone else's emotions, wrap them in your words, and hand them out like party favors.

I also hesitate when it comes to writing about people exactly as I think of them because I rarely tell them in real life. The moments that I have, I experienced intense regret immediately. Other people are not going to change because you think they should, and telling them all the ways they're not measuring up does absolutely nothing but make you wish you hadn't put on your judging pants today.

When I think about the self-righteous speeches I gave a boy who decided he didn't love me anymore, I have to close my eyes from cringing. I thought that his I-love-you's were an eternal commitment, breakable only by death, and I told him so -- many, many times. If he had written about that, the mortification might have killed me. I think, also, about being sixteen years old and telling my mother exactly what I thought of her. I was a silly, selfish girl who thought she knew more about the world than she actually did; I had no compassion, no empathy. If those moments were captured forever in words, I would spend the rest of my life apologizing.

I don't want to see my worst self in print; it would immortalize her in some way, and I don't want to do that to other people either. But the moments when other people were at the worst, I was probably at my weakest; those are stories that resonate with other people, and they're the one's I like to read, too. So how much is mine to tell?

What do you think about memoirs? About writing about people in your life?

You Don't Need Permission to Feel Pretty

2013-03-18T04:00:00.000-07:00

Once, when I was in my school library, I had this bizarre exchange with a boy who, I think, was trying to hit on me using a combination of mean-boy-on-the-playground-who-is-actually-inlove-with-you and Regina George.

He was sitting at the computer across from me and after about a half hour of awkward staring and mumbled comments, he finally struck up a conversation. I listened politely to a rambling speech about his future political aspirations, while he was clearly high out of his mind, until he said: you're really pretty. I responded -- like any normal person would to a compliment from an insane person -- with thank you, to which he aggressively said: so you think you're really pretty?

...what? Homeboy wasn't even quoting Mean Girls; he was seriously questioning me on whether I had dared to think I was pretty before he told me I was. I walked away from the conversation with the distinct impression that attractiveness is something other people bestow on you and not something you should ever claim for yourself. Unless, perhaps, you could recite all the compliments you'd received from others to give validation to the insane notion that you think you're pretty.

He was clearly an asshat, but there's this idea in our culture, our collective psyche, that we should not like ourselves. We can openly talk about how we hate our thighs or need to lose a few pounds, and oh god, in what hideously distorted universe are dressing room mirrors created?!, but to talk about loving a psychical characteristic is to be disgustingly arrogant. Of course, we're supposed to practice self-love -- but a humble, self-deprecating kind of love. Don't ever openly say that you like something about your appearance unless you can also list five things you don't like. Better yet, talk about qualities you like rather than physical characteristics.

I was reading this blog post recently, where the writer (Sarah of Yes and Yes) invited her readers to share their favorite aspect of their appearance. The comments are fascinating. A lot of the comments just straight up shared what they liked and why, and when I read them I was so warmed to see women who weren't bashfully saying, "welll....I guess my hair is okay"; no, they're like: my hair is outstanding! Outstanding is such an unexpectedly great adjective to see someone use about themselves. But some came with the introduction "people have told me..." or the caveat "but I've also struggled with this other thing". The most interesting comment for me was the one that started: "It seems taboo to like yourself."

Why is that true? Why do we relate when others make disparaging comments about themselves but we're uncomfortable when they unabashedly like the way they look? This attitude reinforces negative inner dialogue; if we are afraid to say positive things about ourselves to other people then we're more likely to think awful things about ourselves in private moments.

I don't think we should draw all our self-worth from our physical appearance, or that we even have to be pretty; prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked "female", but we should be able to like the way we look, to find ourselves attractive, without needing anyone else to tell us so. It should not be dependent on anyone else at all. It definitely shouldn't be something we're ashamed of.

If we are to believe the insane advertising we're subjected to, we can feel pretty only if we eat a certain type of cereal, buy a certain type of clothes, have a certain genetic makeup. We can feel lovely without doing/being any of that though, and we should talk about it more. We should talk about how good it feels to be in our skin.

We're so mean to our bodies, our faces, and they're the only one's we've got. Even the way that we talk about our bodies sometimes suggests that they're possessions to be owned, molded and abused, but not really a part of us. The way I think of my body, now that I've given up on hating it for any reason ever, is that it's not who I am, but it's like a best friend: integral to my life (duh!), important, to be respected, loved. My body, after all, is home to all the less tangible parts of myself that I'm proud of, and it's a pretty miraculous home.

I have a middle schoolers basic understanding of science but even I know that the human body is incredible. When I think that my body performs a million functions a day without me having to consciously make it do so and that I also get to have a little button nose, big expressive eyes and a pretty cute butt? Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and think I'm pretty regardless of whether the weirdo in the library thinks I am or not (or anyone else, for that matter).

What do you like about yourself?

A Collection of Good Reads

2013-03-15T04:00:00.000-07:00

Hello! How was your week? I finally got a professor to oversee my independent study, so I'll be writing the beginning of a memoir this summer (eek) and if all my visa issues get sorted, I'll officially be graduating in August. Which raises a lot of complicated foreign person trying to work here issues, but hopefully everything is going to work out. Baby steps.

In the meantime, links!

Looking for jobs invites a lot of self doubt and feelings of inadequacy (unless it doesn't and I'm doing this wrong?!) I found this really comforting/inspiring: No one is going to pick you, pick yourself

Here's the GREATEST article on how humans can live eleven lives (not about reincarnation and instead about the number of opportunities we have to be great at something)

I wrote an ode to girlfriends last year, which is one of my favorite posts because lady friends are spectacular; on the plane last weekend I read about the bond between men, and it's lovely.

If I was a poet, I'd want to be Warsan Shire. This is beautiful: for women who are "difficult" to love.
"You can't make homes out of human beings, someone should have already told you that"

As someone who's often quiet because of going to in-depth analysis of everything said by everyone around me and their motivations for doing so, I loved this: Not Everything is About You (surprise!)

You're reading Alexandra Frazen, right? How to attract people you can count on — in life, love & business and 30 mantras for the over-worked and over-committed

I hate that so much of food advertising is focused on calorie counting and "diet" products without any attention given to eating real, non-processed or genetically modified foods: why diet products are no good

On a happy note: Ten Things That Don't Upset Anybody

Rookie mag is aimed at teenagers but I think the messages here about doubt and making decisions are applicable to everyone: You do not need permission to live the life you want to live

And finally: How to facebook like an 81 year old dad, in case you were wondering (hilarious).

P.S I found a post that I wrote just under a year ago, plan for life, which I prefer so much more to my current plan. I'm going to try and figure out how to get back to that.

Awash With Wonder

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Learning to be kind to my body

A Collection of Good Reads

Living in Denial

Your Life is Your Prayer

Love is Lonely When You Settle

On Bending Without Breaking

What Stories are Ours to Tell?

You Don't Need Permission to Feel Pretty

A Collection of Good Reads