I'm not narcissistic enough to believe that Mr. Rogers reads my blog from wherever he is, but on the off chance that he does, I'd like to thank him for this quote:

"Confronting our feelings and giving them appropriate expression always takes strength, not weakness. It takes strength to acknowledge our anger, and sometimes more strength yet to curb the aggressive urges anger may bring and to channel them into nonviolent outlets. It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it."
 -Fred Rogers

PS- This dog can skateboard. If how much fun he is having doesn't make you smile, there may be something wrong with you. I just wonder what he thinks he is doing...

[Keep Following, Neighbor.]

Silver Linings

Something strange happens when your worst fears come true.

 When you wake to find your nightmares live and breathe, and your life breaks to little bits in front of your face. When you can only helplessly look on while the worst happens and it can't seem to get any worse, and then does. In those moments, you die a little. Pieces of your heart and mind are chipped away, never to be recovered. And it hurts awfully. But this is to be expected. It is the logical outcome of the situation at hand. It's easy to understand why you feel the way you do. That heartbreak is not what is strange.

I think most of us fall asleep most nights worrying about all the terrible things that could happen to us. We allow those thoughts to run over and over in the treadmill of our minds until they become soothing to us. We spend years cultivating lives motivated by preventing worst-case scenarios. So on the off chance that one day we wake up and worst-case has pushed its way through the front door, we are rarely surprised. And we react accordingly. According to plan, we fall down in a heap and sob until we can't anymore. Our reaction to fears coming true isn't strange, either. We've practiced that part in our minds.

And after we've cried our tears and wallowed for the allotted time, we get up. We wake up with tear-soaked pillows and heavy hearts and we keep going. We go about our lives, performing the same routines, if only with small variations. We go to work or school much the way we did before. We may not realize it right away, but things are different--brighter, sharper. Without even realizing it, we have become stronger. Some people notice this about themselves right away and become prideful about it and vow to never let themselves sink so low again... Getting stronger after facing resistance also isn't strange.

But some of us take longer. The realization comes slowly at first. Little events unfold differently. We stand up for ourselves and others when we wouldn't have before. Reactions that we planned out before happen spontaneously. Hesitation decreases. As the sun rises and sets, and weeks and months pass, we become more sure about who we are. And we too realize we are stronger. But only because we know how vulnerable we are. It becomes beautiful.

This is what is strange: when your worst fears come true, you have nothing left to be afraid of, and this is a good thing.

[Keep Following.]

How Much Is Your Self-Worth? A General Rules Post, Kind Of

They are back! That's right, the General Rules of love are back, if only temporarily. So be happy.

Lately I've been reading some self-help books, old journals of mine, and inspirational quotes. And I've noticed a peculiar vein running through most of them. If you could distill the messages in all of them down to a single sentence, it would be: the only thing you can control is yourself.

This is interesting because it seems so self-evident. It seems like a trite platitude at first glance. I just imagine some valley girl from the nineties sassily exclaiming, "DUH!" as she twists some pink gum on her finger. But like most cliches it is so obvious that we forget it as soon as we hear it, and then go about our lives trying to control everything except for ourselves. We get frustrated about hitting red lights, birds pooping on our newly-cleaned cars, getting stuck behind the old woman at the grocery store who still writes checks, and people just disappointing us in general.

This asinine behavior vindicates itself especially in times of emotional trouble. When lovers leave, when family goes astray, and when things wither and die are the times when we try to grip the tightest. But we find quickly that the harder we squeeze, the quicker things fall apart. And then we beat ourselves to a pulp for not controlling something we had no control over in the first place. So label it a self-evident, trivial platitude all you want, it bears repeating--and often.

The next thing I noticed is that our ability to internalize this obvious truth is tightly linked to our self-worth. Usually those who have made their peace with that phrase can feel alright when everything is going wrong. Those who have learned that they can only control themselves through soul-wracking defeats are the calmest when the tempests of life swirl around them. On the other hand, those sad people who vainly think they can have the slightest control over anything outside themselves are the first to fall to pieces.

This is because they associate their worth as an individual with how "put-together" and "perfect" their lives are. It is possible to live under this delusion for small periods of time. When things are going according to our best-laid plans, we are apt to think that things are going right because we willed the outside factors to be arranged just how we wanted. But eventually our plans will come up against something we cannot control. And those who associate success and self-esteem with their false sense of control will crumble. Those who instead turn inward and work on themselves and on their own behavior, realizing that that is their only true choice, will rise above their tribulations.

This problem happens most often with others' freedom of choice. And this most often in love. When we not only love someone, but absolutely require them to survive, we are essentially building a giant house of control-cards. The problem with this (beside the obvious reason) is that whether or not that house stays up isn't completely up to you. When it falls, it won't matter how quickly you can grasp at the fluttering cards.

We must separate our self-worth from outside sources and learn through internal observation what makes us wonderful. The nice thing about accepting this platitude is that the more you control yourself, the better you will feel about you. Yes, I realize this is hard. If it were easy everyone would do it. Overcoming yourself is the hardest thing you will ever do.

In closing, I've found that most of the time, life is a series of acts of letting go.

You're welcome. You don't need to go to that Tony Robbins seminar anymore.
 
[Keep Following.]

Miracle

So my blog just hit 11,000 pageviews.  I know this is only due to the fact that I have ten really devoted followers who refresh my home page a hundred or so times each time they visit. So for those dedicated few I want to say thank you. Sincerely, without your support it would be hard to keep doing what I do. Thank you for visiting my small corner of the internet. The page views are great, but the best thing is hearing face-to-face how you laughed or cried or thought deeply about something I've written. I write for myself, but I also write to share with others, and I am grateful for your support.

That said, a little commentary on some trends I've noticed. I like getting attention for my humorous posts, and they get a lot of response. My posts about love garnered some minor interest from people who know me. My poetry must be terrible because it seems mostly ignored. But far and away the most interesting thing that has happened with my blog was the recent post about women. The response was incredible. That post was shared over and over and that post was marked by a 250% increase in the number of views over my other posts. This is interesting and is a testimony to me that what I wrote was true, potent, and most of all it was relevant.

I like giving people what they want, so I want to post something along that same vein a little more often. Not so often that I would come off as pandering to my readers, but I think there is more to be said. I'm also going to try to post more often. Since I am now an alumnus I have no more excuses. So hold me to it. And I don't plan on stopping poetry posts. I figure if I force feed you, you'll grow to like them. Also if anyone is interested in reading snippets of my fiction, let me know so I can tell you it's not ready yet.

[Keep Following.]

Fitzgerald Rolling

First of all, a little plug for my mother, who always made me read the books before I saw the movie. Doing that taught me a truth at a young age that is so simple that it has become cliche: "the book is better than the movie." But most often, that little sentence is thrown out there and then forgotten like yesterday's news. Or it is said half-heartedly, with the sayer reserving a secret deep inside of him/her that goes something like: "Even if it is considered unintelligent to think so, I have more fun watching the movies."

Why is this? Why do some openly admit that the books are always better than the movie, but refuse to admit that they liked the movies more? Well get ready, because I know why. It's because the mediums are different. Now, that doesn't seem to be some earth-shattering revelation, it is an easily observable fact. But the implications of that fact are often overlooked. The implications of this difference manifest themselves in the schizophrenic attitude of our day about the mediums themselves. Aside from the obvious differences between books and movies, the difference that has the most drastic impact is the amount of time it takes for books to develop. You have to read. It takes time. Books are long. And movies are short. And yes, I realize that I've already lost half of my audience because they didn't make it past the first paragraph.

But there is purpose in the time books take to develop. You get to experience true character development. When the reader is forced to live and laugh and love with the characters, the readers get to experience the lives of the characters in an intimate way. You can't close your eyes to the dirty parts of a character's thoughts or motivations. When you read, you get to use the limitless power of your imagination. There are no actors to pay, or props to set up, no stages to dress. It happens on-the-fly, exactly the way you want it. And after you've spent hours and hours reading and Jay Gatsby finally dies, you feel just as empty as Nick as he watches Gatsby's balloon of extravagance deflate (you see what I did there? Best transition ever.) And that is a feeling that will always be lost in translation from the book to the silver screen, no matter how great the acting is, or how "real" the 3D makes it, simply because you haven't paid the emotional cost of reading for hours.

Movies are all about spectacle. In this aspect, they do in fact trump books. There is simply no amount of description on a page that will equal hearing and seeing a gigantic explosion on a 500-foot screen in a movie theater equipped with the latest cinematic Dolby surround sound. There is something grand about seeing hundreds of thousands of orcs screaming battle-cries on the fields of Pelennor. Not all movie adaptions are bad. I mean, I waited in line to see every midnight showing of the LOTR movies. Some directors try to stay true to what the author was trying to accomplish. They try to convey a message rather than fit in all the events. They try to stay as true to the material and act as a clean window through which the work can shine for itself.

This is not what Baz Luhrmann does. He is more of a stained-glass window. Everything he touches becomes "BAZ LUHRMANN'S [fill in the blank.]"  And it has me going, "what about F. Scott?" But again, my gripe isn't necessarily with the fact that they are adapting the book, I like some book adaptions.  What I don't like is that Baz doesn't trust his source material enough to speak on its own, so he gets JAY Z to executive produce. In doing so he is forcing the movie to be relevant to us. "Hey kids, look at this! Isn't it great?" And instead of the movie being about the fruitlessness of pursuing wealth and leisure, it becomes about the glamour of pursuing wealth and leisure. The movie itself starts to become a promo for the soundtrack, and the book is completely forgotten. Tell me I'm wrong, I dare you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztO3sZMQzW8
 
Back when I was still debating on whether or not to even see the movie, I watched and interview where Luhrmann stated that he even cut the funeral scene out of the theatrical release of the movie. This is essentially when I decided not to see the movie. Because the funeral scene is arguably the most important part of the book. It's what finally compels Nick to move away from New York and the extravagant but empty lifestyle there. I guess it all makes sense though. This is the perfect movie to sum up our day and age in which we are so willing to exchange fun and spectacle for real connection and a better experience, simply because it takes more effort. Yes the movie may be fun, but the book was better.

Baz doesn't get my money, and please Fitzgerald, don't roll over too hard.

[Keep Following. And I am sad, because Leonardo DiCaprio makes a stunning Gatsby and probably gives an A+ performance. Just like in my upcoming post.]