Riding the bus past the Basilica of St. Mary, a five-year-old child spoke up behind me.
“That’s a castle!” she stated with great authority. “A princess lives there! And bad guys!”
Riding the bus past the Basilica of St. Mary, a five-year-old child spoke up behind me.
“That’s a castle!” she stated with great authority. “A princess lives there! And bad guys!”
I’m not writing lately because too much is changing, and I worry that if I write anything I’ll be like to contradict it soon after. So I suppose the only topic left is change itself.
I recognize better how much I still have to learn about myself, and how each discovery I make about my own personality can cause big shifts in my priorities.
I try not to have strong convictions, as such, because I value adaptability. But I do tend to make very definite statements about my plans and goals; if I didn’t make strong choices and act on them, I wouldn’t get anywhere, would I?
Let me tell you this now: no matter how certain I was last year or last month or yesterday when I told you what was important in my life and my career, I will happily and completely change my mind if I see fit.
So, the theme of my life is transience. I bounce at whim from one set of circumstances to another. I continually create a new world to live in, with new patterns and goals and values, and the remnants of the old are only in what I’ve learned about myself and in the relationships I’ve maintained.
It’s another one of those months.
I keep e-mailing myself with topics for new blog posts, and now the top half of my inbox is full of these subject lines that stare balefully at me, waiting to be fully realized. But I don’t have enough idle time to get around to any of them.
Talk to you soon.
Every one of us lives with the ultimate responsibility: the continuous creation of a human life.
You cannot act without meaning. Every choice you make, no matter how trivial, is a stone added to the house you’re building. You are defined by your personality, your memories, your body, and your relationship with the world; and your every thought and action affects these things permanently.
Wisdom, then, lies in recognizing and understanding the results of your actions, from the greatest life-changing decisions to the prosaic but still important details. With this awareness you can choose the results you want and act accordingly. You can build the stone walls of your life with art and skill instead of heedlessly chucking stones into an ugly pile.
The secret to living well is this: Whatever you do, do it on purpose.
Choose your words carefully, whoever you’re speaking to. Choose the foods you eat and the booze you drink (or don’t). Choose to get up in the morning (or not). Choose when to walk, when to run, when to dance, when to shout and when to whisper. Choose when to be steadfast and when to be whimsical. Whatever you do, choose it consciously. If you don’t have a good reason, you are free to make one up and never apologize for it. Just remember that whatever you do, you’re building something. It’s no one’s responsibility but yours to make that building strong, beautiful, and unique, and every action you take without any purpose is a carelessly tossed stone and a wasted opportunity to grow.
The greatest lives are those lived intentionally. May you find your intent and remember to use it.
If you ever want anecdotal reasons about why I love being a performer, just ask me about the opening weekend of The Fantasticks. It didn’t quite have everything…but pretty close.
I was headed out for my walk of shame, and as she showed me to the door, she invited her roommate to ogle me.
“How does it feel to be an object?”
I thought about it for a moment.
“Pretty good, actually.”
Consider the possibility that all beliefs and opinions held by humans are equally justified.
Does this do more to legitimize the fringe, or to undermine the majority?
Linguistically, one cannot strive without enduring strife.
I wonder, is this an axiom that holds in reality as well?
Can success only be found through conflict?
Does every achievement lie on the other side of some obstacle?
Or can some goals be reached by a scenic path of gentle contours and easy curves?
Reached with time and with effort but without struggle?
I suppose I’d say those are pursued, sought…driven after, not striven for.
Then the question becomes,
Does the distinction matter?
Today may have been the coldest day of the year in Minneapolis. Fifteen below zero. Sure, it was colder in the rest of the state, but -15 is nothing to shake a stick at.
This is the cold that turns you stupid. Its insistence won’t allow you to concentrate on anything else. Hat drawn low on your brow, shoulders hunched, hands in pockets, eyes down to track uneven and slippery footing, your world shrinks and you withdraw into a tiny cavern of discomfort. There is no sky, no humanity. There is only the cold and the next step toward warmth and respite. This kind of cold reaches even through your jacket. Your core temperature begins to drop, and your IQ follows as blood is redirected to your vital organs from your extremities and then from your brain.
When you arrive home and begin to warm up, you are disturbed to realize that your memory of the trip just past is a little fuzzy, like you’ve just woken from a dream. But really, you were just an idiot for half an hour.
In my last post, I started to write a sentence with a particularly choice word that elegantly captured what I wanted to say.
Before I got the good word written down, I decided to try a different one first to see how it sounded. It was ok, but the original idea was better.
I went to write the final version, and when I got to that word my mind went completely blank. I couldn’t find the word I wanted anywhere. I sat still and thought about it for a solid minute. Then I left it as it was with the imperfect substitute.
I still can’t remember what that word was supposed to be.