A Resolution Kept

New Year’s resolutions are really interesting. I am relatively very young but I still remember all the random goals and resolutions I have made—Drink more water, get seven hours of sleep each night, eat better and the list goes on. But I always fail. Even within the first day. This New Year, I had one resolution. It has been by far the most ridiculous one yet and there was no reason for doing it other than the fact that I wanted to. And the best part is, I was pretty sure I was going to fail even before I made my “commitment.” But I am happy and a little embarrassed to say that this Friday, I completed my new year’s resolution. I watched all five seasons of “Lost” in the month of January. That is over 75 episodes that each last about 40 minutes. It’s pretty disgusting to think that I sat in front of a TV that much in one month, but I did it and it feels so good to finally be a Lost junkie. All I did this month was eat, sleep, go to class, go to rehearsal, got to church, and watch Lost. It has been pretty exciting. I will admit that there were times when I was watching that I would stand up, yell at the screen out of frustration, and stomp into the kitchen. The plot of the show gets crazy and so many people die and there is so much blood. However, I still love it. The best part? The 6^th and final season airs this Tuesday. Dun, dun, dun.

Winter Woeful Land

I really don’t care for the snow. It covers everything. All the beautiful trees, flowers and their brilliant colors covered by the white powder. Then, in a few days it all turns brown and gross. Where is the beauty in that? Skiing is also one of my least favorite things to even think about and trying to walk through snow is such a work out. It’s even worse when you step and it pulls off your boot. It causes all sorts of trouble for traveling too. Snow keeps families apart at Christmas and makes a trip to the grocery store a three-hour traffic jam. It makes your nose get all red and your fingers feel like they could just break off and never grow back. It gets caught in your hair when you walk and you can feel it slowly melt and trickle onto your scalp and down your neck. The snow freezes me from the outside in. And it doesn’t matter how much tea, cider or hot chocolate I drink, I can’t get warm ‘til mid Spring.

3:27

The power of music is sometimes overwhelming. I mean, music is a foundation to every culture so I guess it's no surprise that it is so universal. It can be used in spiritual, educational, celebratory, and all other settings. But I think the greatest thing is how just one song can completely change your mood. And even more amazing, is that certain songs can really take me back to a point in my life. As specific as one moment in time, a time when I was sitting in the back right seat of a car when I was 14 on my way to basketball practice. When I hear that song, I can feel the road moving underneath the wheels and the shadows from the headlights moving across my face. And I can still see my friend’s father in the driver’s seat. He died 1 month later of cancer, but that song always seems to take me back and I can see him as clear as daylight for those 3 minutes and 27 seconds.

(Sorry for the slightly emo entry, music has taken over my life, probably because I have been in rehearsal for the last 10 hours and still have 4 more to go.)

Chapter One

A friend told me the other day that he didn’t want to share anything he believed with me because he is “the sum of so many different beliefs” that when you try to pull them apart, it doesn’t work. We weren’t talking about religious beliefs. We were talking about why bad things happen to good people, why some people hate silence, and a lot of other things. But he was afraid that if he shared a small slice about himself, that I would see only that and not understand the person he really is.

I let him have his way and I took the excuse, but his fearful reply triggered a train of thought. Everyone is the sum of everything that’s happened to them. As humans we pick up things and learn about our self from summer camp at age ten to college professors when we’re in our twenties to bad break ups all along the way. There is no way to just download everything we believe and know onto someone else’s hard drive in one sitting. It just isn’t possible. We have to start somewhere, just like a book starts with one chapter. What is good about a book, is that is has been organized and edited. It reads so that it makes sense from page to page and chapter to chapter. Though there is a chronological order to our life, its not always the same order that we should place our experiences and beliefs in. I feel like my friend just didn’t know where to start. He didn’t know what his first chapter should be.

I don’t wish he would hurry up and write his life novel so that he can tell me, but I wish he would start to think about that first chapter. Because when the time comes that he needs and wants to hand over that first page to someone, it’s nice to have it ready.