(500) days of summer

 

I just finished watching (500) days of summer. Again. I think it makes my top ten.  There's this quote near the end of the movie, after the girl he loves, summer, marries someone else and breaks his heart.

 

 "Most days of the year are unremarkable. They begin, and they end, with no lasting memories made in between. Most days have no impact on the course of a life. May 23rd was a Wednesday."

I'm a rather large fan of this quote because, well because I think it's true. We go through so much of life on autopilot.  We can live for weeks on end without doing anything impacting.  Sometimes I wonder if after my life has run it's course if I will have really impacted anything at all.   Not to sound like an english paper - excrutiatingly disecting a quote... but it's the last line that gets me.  We CAN do things that matter.  Despite the fact that we can live a lot of life meaninglessly, we don't have to.  Relationships affect people.  Things you say and time you share and what you do matters.  One of my favorite songs by Dallas Green goes, "we're all just waiting to die." I can relate to this feeling.  Sometimes when I go through the motions... making the 500th cup of coffee for the day, waking up one more time, telling yet another person I "hope they have a great day!" ... I feel like I really am just living to die.  But that's not it.  And I am so thankful that I don't have to go through life that way. Because I have hope.

Finding the line in the grey.

"Living in the grey with a black and white mind isn't ideal."

... a friend of mine posted this quote the other day, and it seems to relate well to the theme of my week.  To be honest, I don't know if I completely get it, and I'm not going to pretend I do, but I will attempt to explain what it meant to me this week.  This week was interesting, I suppose.  I saw some people that I haven't seen in a while, people that are not necessarily living how I would personally choose. But the big thing for is... I care about them so much that I fear that if I try to "correct" what they are doing that they will push me out and the situation will get even worse.  Generally, in life, that has been my approach to people.   I feel like as Christians we are called to Love, no matter what... and God will do the judging.  Not to say I am some perfect, all forgiving person, (not by ANY means) but for the most part I don't have a hard time caring about people that are screwing up.  So i've been going along, listening to people as they tell me where they've been and how they've stopped caring about what everyone wants for them, and whatever else... all the while patting myself on the back for not "judging" them.  But the fact of the matter is.... are you really loving people if you're not willing to risk them liking you for their overall well-being? I like to think that if I just accept them they will eventually thank me for always being there and at some point I will be able to make a difference in their life. But maybe I need to be saying that now.  I don't know. 

So THEN, at wings this Wednesday... someone hit me with the fact that we should be honouring God so much that we are angry when people that say that are representing Christ are not living that way.  That we love God so much that we cannot even bear when people dishonour him by not living that way. So now, I am caught somewhere in the middle. I suppose we need to find that balance between 'loving God with all our hearts, soul and mind, and loving neighbours as ourselves.'

You can't go home.

Daylight savings. I love it.  You might notice a trend, where I have a slight obsession with time. I might not be one of those watch wearers of perpetual clock-checkers, but there is little that makes me feel more awesome than when I snag time from the clutches of the universe.  When I get up before everybody else and start my day, or when due to some solstice cycle I don't fully get, I get an extra hour which I am proceeding to waste writing a blog post.  Lately I've been thinking a lot about my upcoming trip to the UK. I'm really exciting but also really apprehensive.  I love love love to travel but for some reason with this trip my fears are very prominent in the preparation process.  I was just thinking about that line in that (awful) song that says "they say you can't go home."  I was thinking about how whenever I am on a flight I like to ask the person beside me, "So, are you going on a trip or going home?" I suppose if I was asked this question... it would be a bit of both.  I left a big part of my heart in the UK,  and I don't think I'm going to find it going back.  Talking with a friend today over coffee, we were talking about what kind of people we are when all the strength that comes from the ties and supports around us is stripped away.  When, new-agey as it may sound... what kind of "inner strength" do you have? Are you really trusting God or are you just leaning on all the comforts around you to get you through.  Maybe that's something that this trip will help me reveal a little bit.  Going by myself to Europe (although I am a bit familiar with England, it's still scary) and trying to meet up with friends that I haven't seen in 3 months so that we can partake on an unplanned adventure together which is supposed to be a blast.  Maybe it's time to just let go, let go and freefall into the unknown.

Costume

So yesterday was Halloween. And, as much as I don't appreciate the fact that it's become "how little clothes can you possibly put on and go out in public with day", I kind of like Halloween. It's ridiculous, really. It's like everyone acts like children again for one day... playing dress up.  I think maybe we like it so much because every day society is telling us we need to be someone else.  But we need to be that someone else, while still appearing to be ourself. And we need to act as though it is completely normal that we are entirely pulled together and beautiful and wealthy and talented. I mean, of course... I just threw this on.  Halloween is that one day a year where we can be whoever we want to be, to whatever extend and it is completely accepted.  Any other day and people might question why you are wearing a princess dress or why you decided to go with fishnets instead of dresspants.  I wonder if it would fly if we had a day where, just for 24 hours, all the messages were shut off.  Where nobody saw ads with thin, beauiful, perfectly proportioned women not so subtlely telling us that we will have the perfect life if only we buy that dress.  What if for one day we were not only whoever we thought we wanted to be, but we were just us.  We just lived as we were created to be.  If we dressed for function and not fashion... entirely.  And no, I don't consider MEC function, it's just fashion for those who don't admit to liking fashion.  If we wore things only because they kept us from freezing our toes off. Or if we just left our hair how it naturally fell and noone cared that there was an unruley cowlick.  Sometimes I think our vanity has gone so far that a world without it is almost entirely inconseivable.