Happiness is a choice.

This is the simple principle I live my life by. Over this last year or so, I have learned how to be happy even when it is difficult to make that choice. Sometimes crap just seems to rain down on your head, and sometimes it is easy to get buried in that crap, but you really can choose to stand up in the air, shake your fist at the world and scream: "I am happy, dang it!"
And while I have discovered this simple principle to be true, again and again, I have also noticed something else. While happiness is still a choice, it is also a process. More than a single choice, it could be more accurate to say that happiness is a series of choices. Decisions define us. Daily, everyday little decisions. Deciding to choose the right has the power to make us infinitely happy if we so choose. On the other hand, deciding to go against what is right has the power to make us sad, unfortunate souls.
Truly, I have learned that each little decision matters, because the whole may be greater than the sum of its parts, but each part still constitutes the whole.

Happy Chinese New Year

It's the year of the rabbit, and about the time that I actually start trying to do my New Year's Resolutions. I have been okay about exercising lately, although not that great at eating healthy(there are currently 4 peanut butter cookies in my backpack for a library snack...don't ask if I have already eaten several), and my other goals are either non-existent or should be since I am not working at them.
I actually really like Chinese New Year, even though I am not Chinese, nor have I ever really taken the time to celebrate it. It reminds me of a childhood friend of mine named Linda (name change) who would always bring these really yummy white rabbit candies to school and share them with me. Linda would also get a bunch of little red envelopes from her family members with money in them. I was always slightly jealous of those little red envelopes, and I could definitely use a couple of those sent to me right now. Anyhow, one of these days I will have my own little celebration of Chinese New Year and everybody can bring me a little red envelope filled with cash, and we can dance in the street and launch firecrackers in the backyard. But this year, I will just have to live with reevaluating my New Year Goals, make a few more, and actually work towards accomplishing them.
To conclude, a quote my Physics teacher shared with the class from our prophet Thomas Monson:


"Success is contingent upon our effective use of the time given us. When we cease peering backwards into the mists of our past and craning forward into the fog that shrouds the future and simply concentrate upon doing what lies clearly at hand, then we are making the best and happiest use of our time. Success is the ratio of your accomplishments to your capabilities."


Gung Hay Fat Choy!


Miss M

Coffee Break Friends

you know

exactly who you are,

catching up

faraway lives,

simple courtesy check

cordial,

occasionally animated,

rarely

in the conversation

for the other,

rather:

ready and steaming

to spill.

the tedious story

that is life.

Caution!

Contents may be hot.

The Weight of an Instant

grew up

sheltered life

a bubble girl

in a big world

finally walked out

onto a tightrope.

And that worked—

tightroping the line—

for awhile…

So I figured walking worked

and never,

never had to run

At least not until:

One day,

tightroping

I felt the sharp grip

of razor teeth

grasping my ankle,

I made the mistake

of looking down,

down into the eyes

of a ravaged beast.

Locking eyes

for

just a moment

there was a time

where I forgot to run.

But when

the pull of that

death grip

began to make me

fall.

I woke up.

The pull of gravity hit me.

No longer a deer in the headlights.

Woke up.

And ran.

ran away

back towards the bubble,

But when I reached home

the bubble had already popped.

So now I stand here

at the edge of the cliff,

the remains of my safe home at my feet.

Where do I go now?

I know not.

But I do know this

Next Time:

there will be no hesitation.

I will Run.

What does it mean to care?

The gardener who whispers kind words

as he carefully waters each individual.

The mother who kneels down

taking her crying child in her arms.

The tired worker who

gives up her seat on the bus.

The lover who admires his beloved

before he wakes her with gentle kisses.

Each person taking the time

to tend. gather. open.

Is there a difference between all these actions and love?

No.

Those who say they care, talk.

Those who love, don’t.

Granite and Glass

You are granite.

I am an empty wine glass.

You know what happens when we touch.

You laugh like the sun coming up laughs

at a star that disappears into it.

Love opens my chest,

and thought returns to its confines.

Patience and rational considerations leave.

Only passion stays, whimpering and feverish.

Some men fall down in the road like dregs thrown out.

Then totally reckless the next morning

they gallop out with new purposes.

Love is the reality,

and poetry is the drum that calls us to that.

Do not keep complaining about loneliness.

Let the fear-language of that theme

crack open and float away.

Let the priest come down from his tower, and not go back up.

-Rumi

from The Big Red Book

My dear and wonderful grandmother, Nanni, got me the most wonderful present for Christmas, that is perhaps my most cherished gift of all. The Big Red Book by Coleman Barks with poetry by Rumi, an Islamic poet from the 1200s is my new Bible. It is filled with some of the most beautiful words ever written, and such wisdom and purity is contained in the pages that it nearly brought me to tears as I sat reading it on the plane for the first time.

I just finished the first section of the book, and this particular poem stood out to me, especially the second to last stanza. “Do not keep complaining about loneliness/Let the fear-language of that theme/crack open and float away.” This is the reason I write poetry. To me, it is what cracks open my fear, my loneliness, it is truly the drum that calls us to the purity of love. When I pour my words from deep inside the place we call a heart, I cannot complain or fear, I can only open myself to the emotion that runs through me. And this is what Rumi demands of his audience through his poetry: to open. If I can aspire to a grain of the greatness that is carried through his poetry, I will be satisfied.

I live in a snow globe
a swirling protected bubble
nothing ever moves
forward backward
The empty yesterdays
and frightened tomorrows
shock me into scared silence
no guarantee that
I will feel
the same
when I wake up to reality
for now
let's just lie here
and keep pretending
that the bubble will never pop
and the snow globe will never drop.