sometimes i get surprised. and it's not the bad, shocking surprised. it's the "hesitate right now, just for a moment, and just soak it in, don't you just love your life" surprised. sometimes i love being surprised.

Ah, bliss

"Do anything, but let it produce joy." --Henry Miller

Joy for whom? Not all of our actions will produce joy for us. I would not find joy in being the employer who must let go a man who has given forty long years of hard, loyal labor. I would not find joy in being the mother who must watch as the daughter she tried so hard to raise properly is taken away in the backseat of a police car because she was dealing drugs. I would not gain joy from choosing to eat with the people who "promise" me great things, and in so doing, leave the friend who will always be there for me standing alone in the rain. Joy for whom?

A man walks through his front door at the end of a long day at work. He is carrying a box filled with the things that used to litter his small office at the company he has worked at for the past forty years. Today was his last day. He is greeted by his youngest great-grand-daughter who runs straight into her granddad's arms with shrieks of joy. He settles down on the couch in the family room with her on his lap. His family one by one wanders in and join them to watch a movie together. At dinner, the man looks around and realizes he doesn't know his children or his grandchildren as well as he should. Well, he thinks with a sudden surge of joy, I've got time now to learn who they are. And maybe...i might even be able to show them who i am. A smile no one has seen in years forms on his lips.

A daughter shifts the heavy dufflebag on her shoulder. She stands at the end of the driveway of a house she has not seen in over a year. A moment passes before she gains the courage to walk up to the door and knock. Her mother opens the door only to stand there shocked and speechless. Dropping her bag, the girl pulls her mother into a hug. "Thanks, mom," she whispers. "I never realized how much I was hurting you. I am so very sorry." As she pulls away from her daughter, the woman wonders if it could be possible, and as she looked into her daughter's eyes she knew that it was. Her daughter had finally come home to her, in all meanings of the phrase. Ten minutes later, as her mom gets her a cold soda, the girl looks around the house and wonders how she could have ever taken it all for granted. Now, she thinks as she fingers a picture of her mother, now I think I will be able to stand with the strength she always wanted me to have. Maybe I can love, to love with even half the love she loves me with, because here I will always be loved.

"Matthew! I'm so sorry for leaving you standing in the rain," he apologizes. "I meant to call you to cancel. I had a job interview. I know we had this planned for months. I'm so sorry."

"Georgie, it's ok. I've not thought of it." Matthew sighs.

"But I totally left you standing in the rain."

"Yeah," Matthew pauses. "But if you hadn't, I wouldn't have meet my wife. She saved me with her umbrella ya know." Matthew stretches his neck to fix the black bow tie. He sees Georgie fumbling with his. "I would have thought the groom would have learned how to tie his bowtie," Matthew teases.

An hour later, Matthew stands beside his best friend since kindergarten. He is Georgie's best man. But Matthew can't see what's going on during the ceremony because all he can do is stare at his wife sitting in the third row. Ah, bliss.

We grow up with such hopes, such dreams. We spend so much time reaching for them. We spend so much energy pursuing our shooting star. We are willing to expend everything we have and then some just to obtain that one thing that has possessed our dreams since our childhood. We push and push to grab it. But do we realize what we are pushing at? Do we know at what price we gain this thing? There are times when we should press forward; it is not in us to be without a goal and a destination. But in this pursuit, we can not forget where we are, or who is around us. We are never alone. And the choices we make do not affect us only. Sometimes it takes us awhile to realize exactly what it is that we are pursuing. Sometimes we think that we are going after this one thing, when in reality we want something else entirely. Sometimes we think that we are pursuing our goal, our shooting star, but we aren't. We are striving to please someone by climbing their ladder for them. Some goals weren't made to be met, at least not by us. Some dreams weren't supposed to be obtained. Yet, we grow up with such hopes, such dreams, such aspirations to be a better person, or at least half the person our parents were. And some dreams...some dreams are like real stars...their light takes millions of years to reach us, so long, in fact, that the star could already be dead and yet its light would still be traveling towards us. We may think that we should be a certain person, striving to be that perfect child our parents always wanted. We may think that we should try to be everything we can be because they did. In our eyes, there is no worthier aspiration: to be half the man our father was, to have half the strength our mothers had. And yet, we grow up with such hopes, such dreams of stars that shine though they be long dead. There is nothing to be gained in pretending to be someone you aren't. There is nothing to be lost in striving to be someone you know you can be: yourself, no matter who that may be. Despite everything that happens, or everything that may happen, we grow up, and we pass our hopes, our dreams, and a little sliver of who we are to the next generation. But most importantly, we grow up.

When did we stop caring? When did what happens to us in our lives become water on our oiled raincoats? Why doesn't it matter to us anymore? Why don't we cry over the pain? Why don't we smile at the contentment? Instead, when we hurt someone we loved more than anything in the world, we shrug our shoulders saying, "what? life is life. you've just gotta get strong enough to face it. you can't bend every time the wind blows." Instead, when something that would have caused us to run to our safeplace, we shrug our shoulders saying, "what? life is life. i've gotten strong enough to face it. i won't bend every time the wind blows." we distance ourselves from...everything. we tell ourselves that we don't care because we shouldn't care. this is the way life is supposed to be, this is the way life is we tell ourselves. and before we know it we're standing alone. isn't this what we wanted? nothing and no one to care about? we didn't want the noise and disturbance that comes from being in a family that loves us. we didn't want the pain that comes the occasional friction with people who care about us and don't agree with how we're destroying our lives. we ran away from the chaos, the pain, the disagreements, the noise, the anguish, the sorrow, to a place we thought was safe. it was a place we thought we would thrive in. but here there is no peace for there is no chaos. There is no contentment for pain does not exist. There is no forgiveness for there are no arguments. There is no silence for the only noise here is silence. There is no happiness for who knows what happiness is when they have not expereienced anguish? There is no love for who can love who has not felt sorrow? it takes us awhile to realize we are the only ones drowning in our own misery. self-inflicted misery.

sometimes, most times, to have peace there needs to be a little strife first. to experience contentment, we have to hurt a little first. to gain forgiveness, we must err. to be silent is for us to stop making whatever rucaus we were making. to obtain happiness is to know that the anguish experienced now will end. to be able to love is think we have lost everything, everyone, and then realize that we were never in danger of losing them because they would never give up on us despite everything we had said or done.

we might have to accept our lives for what they are. but we never have to accept life as something we can't change. and never as something we don't have to care about.

Pepsi and Daisies

Life is not all wine and roses. There are days of incomprehensible pain, of inexplicable sorrow, of undeniable loneliness. And then there are the days that aren't like the others. The days that aren't filled with questions and answers. The days that aren't forcing you to run from everything you know and love. The days that don't cocoon you in a blanket of contentment. They are the ordinary days. The days that are Pepsi and daisies. Those are the days that nobody notices. No one takes notice of an ordinary day. They're the days that you decide to walk to work since it's only three blocks away. They're the days that you rent a movie because it's Wednesday night and the library has a rent one get one free policy for Wednesdays. They're the days you go to dinner with your closest friends, and decide to split a steak dinner with a girl you've known since the first grade and whom you consider to be a sister. They are the days you choose to make an ordinary day. You choose not to make a big deal out of this thing that frightens so many; this thing called life. You choose pepsi and daisies.