The I Can't Nation

   This morning I managed to get a small amount of time to myself, I decided to take advantage of this time (on a bus) to listen to music and try and piece together some thoughts that have been floating around my head for the last few days. This is the end result...



   I tend to be a person with a head full of constant thinking. I don't always know what these thoughts are exactly, sometimes they're just there in the background trying to push their way out. I don't know always know how to put these thoughts to words, but I always know they're there. I walk through the day with these half thoughts trying to piece themselves together as I go. I spend time listening, thinking, and occasionally trying to speak the things  I'm thinking, but mostly just listening and thinking. As I go through the day to day, talking to people or listening to conversations people are having I tend to hear one phrase said so many different times on so many different topics. I call it the we can't epidemic. Now I was taught from a very young age, and this may very well be the most important thing I was ever taught, I was taught I can't doesn't exist. I was taught if you dream it you can do it. I was taught if you put your mind to it, somehow there is a way to make it happen. Once upon a time someone dreamed that people would fly high up in the sky, and look at us now. The seemingly impossible becomes possible every day. So in this way, I can't does not exist. People say I can't, we can't, it will never happen.. so much through out the day that I don't think they even realize how much of an epidemic it has become. They say it for the smallest things, "I can't learn a foreign language, I'm just no good at it" to big huge things "I'm just one person, I can't change anything." That last one gives an idea of what sparked these thoughts in my head to begin with.
 
   I was talking to a friend the other day, we were talking about the world. We were talking about greed, religious intolerance, sexual intolerance, racial intolerance, every intolerance and judgement that is passed everyday. We were talking about the me, myself, and I politicians and the I can't Nation, because that is what we as an entire people around the world have become. A nation of I can'ts, we can'ts, it's not possibles. These conversations tend to go the same way every time I have them, with a skeptical look my way, a sigh and a "ya it's a nice thought but it will never happen". The point of this blog, why not?

  I just finished reading "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" for the.. fourth or fifth time. Now I don't really believe in heaven or hell, but this book carries in it some very good messages. The first message comes early in the book and is very simple to grasp. "Strangers are just family you haven't met yet." Imagine the impact of such a simple thought, a simple change in behavior. If we actually treated everyone we met with the kindness we afford to family, imagine that impact? Now before I go further on that, the second message (which is actually the entire premise of the book) ties in with this. Everyone that crosses your path is effected by you, and effects you. Everyone. From people you never talk to, from people you straight up ignore, to people you end up having in depth conversations with. Why? We are all connected. There is a deep connection between each and every person. Something in us that calls out to reconnect with the pieces of itself that it sees in others. I wanted to stop for a minute, and really focus on this thought.

 Imagine you are riding on the bus, you have your headphones in and your eyes cast down somewhere so as not to be forced to talk to anyone. Someone gets on the bus and sits across from you, you don' tknow it but this person is having an absolutely terrible day.. month.. year. For whatever reason they are miserable, they feel invisible to the world, and as if they don't matter. They glance your way, and your first instinct is to look anywhere but at them. To avoid conversation at all costs. Unbeknownst to you, you have just confirmed that persons feelings of invisibility. Now lets imagine you do something different this time. Let's imagine that this time, you listen to that part of you calling out to connect to this person. You smile their way and ask how they are. You, a complete stranger, just transformed that persons day. All it took was a smile and a hello, and you made that person feel visible again. It's a simple example of how we are all connected and how we can all impact each other, but it gets the point across.

  Now to tie this all back into my original point, the I can't nation, our world. Why is it that so many people think it is impossible to make this world a better place, one person at a time? If every person who says "we can't do that" was to stop and say "-I- can do that" imagine the difference? If even one person steps out of their norm and says today I'm going to live as if every stranger I see is just family I haven't met yet, let me treat that person as if they are me, as if they are my best friend, or my favorite aunt, imagine the impact? One person makes an impact on one person, who moves on to make an impact on another person (ya I think they made a movie about this ;) ), the point is.. it all snowballs. It starts to roll down a giant hill catching everyone up in it's path as it goes, becoming an unstoppable avalanche. A lovealanche if you will.

 It's not a matter of, we don't have the power or we don't have the money to make a difference. Love is free. A smile is free. Compassion is free.

"Imagine all the people sharing all the world"

Imagine. Love. Say I can. And the world will  live as one.

It's really just that simple, I'll start.

The Journey of Love

   The last seven months has been quite a journey for me. A journey of pain, heartache, depression like I have  never felt before.. and out of all of that, seeing myself for the first time in a long time. Growth. That is the point behind life's troubling times. The roller coaster that we can experience through out our lives is meant to teach us to grow. We aren't born into knowing. We are born to learn.

     Six years ago I fell in love. I fell hard and I fell fast for the most amazing man. He became my best friend, he became my everything - and I mean everything. I wrapped myself up in him completely and lost myself. The next six years of our lives were filled with hard times. It was filled with money problems, it was filled with trust problems, it was filled with a small amount of resentment from me that I never understood. It was also filled with love, friendship, amazing memories. It was filled with holding onto each other when we had nothing else to hold onto. We were young, we made mistakes, we shoved each other away when we should have sat and as he said to me once "slapped each other silly". We didn't do that though, instead we drifted. We made decisions based on emotions without thinking. We took something that could have been beautiful and we twisted it.

    When that relationship came to an end I was left broken. I was left bitter and openly resentful. I couldn't understand how I had given everything I had - and it hadn't been enough. That is where the last seven months comes into play. Through out our break up we were determined to hold onto our friendship, but neither of us knew how. I wanted to lash out at him and hurt him and I feel pretty confident that he felt the same way. We hurt each other in those first couple months. Then we began to heal. We spent time together, we spent time talking, we spent time.. understanding. In short, we found closure.

  On the way to that closure I spent a lot of time talking to other friends on the topic of love and relationships. I spent a lot of time looking inside myself at what I want and need. I spent a lot of time looking outside at him and what he needed. So the time came, when he found himself in a new relationship. Everyone worries as to how I would take this news, but I am happy. That confused me at first, to know that I wasn't putting on a happy face and just saying the words but I was in fact genuinely happy. For the last year, from August when I left Canada until now we have both been so unhappy. He was drinking a lot and going out a lot and throwing himself into work. He wasn't living healthy and he sure as hell was anything but happy. I couldn't get out of bed some days, it was terrible. It was no way to live. I love this man in a way that I have never loved before. I love him unconditionally and I do not need to be -with- him to love him. It isn't the kind of love where I expect relationship and marriage and life ever after. It is real love, it has no expectations. It has no limits. It wants him to find happiness because he deserves happiness.

 That was the lesson of my journey. Love. Love yourself unconditionally. Love others as you love yourself. Want for others what you want for yourself. When you love, you don't hold someone back, you hold them up and tell them to fly. Every once in awhile you get to fly with them, and that's enough. Friendship, true friendship is love, and love is as the Beatles said, all we need. A line from Eat Pray Love says "We will be unhappy together, but happy we are not apart" that .. is the worst future I could ever imagine and I am glad that that, was not my future. I am glad that that was not his future. It should be no ones future. When we cherish love, respect love, and put love first what we get is a life full of amazing friendships. This is the lesson, this is the journey to love and to finding my best friend.

Love freely, love without fear, love without expectations.