Thats-SoH-Cliche`

eli-wonderwall:

this was a beautiful movie

In Vienna, Austria, everything is illuminated. The constant fog and few hours of daylight make that inevitable. My brother and I arrive wide-eyed and bushy tailed, with no expectations in tow. We’ve only got two days to see Vienna and two to see Zurich, Switzerland. It’s situations like these that bring about sayings like, “Make every moment count.”

Throughout all the traveling, I can see my American-self and my Spain-self blending into this character I very much enjoy. American me booked every flight and pre-booked every hostel but my Spain-self only allowed me to write down points of interest in each city. Better to leave room for the unexpected.    

My list for Vienna consists of sights I’ve viewed over and over in one of my favorite movies Before Sunrise. This list leads me directly to the Riesenrad Ferris Wheel as soon as our feet touch Vienna cobblestone. Prater park is the most picturesque amusement park I’ve ever laid eyes on. My brother and I step into cart four on the Ferris Wheel with a young French couple. As we watch the cart go round, I can imagine Jesse and Celine falling into their first kiss, over-looking the historic city. My trip proves to be a bit less romantic than theirs, but no less enchanting.

Michael and I sit, mostly in awe, but also quite lost in thought. My brother is busy comparing his dreams with what he thinks is probable, trying to figure out when he got old enough for his dreams to seem illogical.

On the other hand, as I watch the days dwindle down to December 9 when I leave this very real dream, I wonder about starting over. I know it is never too late to begin again but there is nothing like a new beginning. And as I return to my home, my responsibilities, and my past, I know I am more pulling out the old slate from my backpack than being handed a new one on my way into America.

Over analysis brings me to try to figure out which I’d prefer: the new slate or the old?

Examples of my past tend to suggest that although most would prefer a clean slate, the best we can usually get is a slate with minimal eraser marks. I had a friend in high school that I was extremely close to. We were neighbors and carpooled together for years therefore the closeness was only natural. Some way or another, bad things happened between us. A lot of betrayal and thievery. Normal high school dramatics. We went our separate ways, a great necessity for the growth of us both, but coincidentally ended up in Spain together for this school year. As soon as I saw her, the anger was gone. The pain and the disappointment along with that. The past really was just that.

Although everything between us is okay now, we will never be the same. We can forgive, we can turn a new page but we can’t ever really start over, can we?

Our whole lives, everything we are up until this very second are our memories. Our memories of times. Our memories of people. Our memories of things we would never redo if we got the chance. Memories of things we would choose to actually do if the opportunity presented itself another time.  

The only clean slate we really get is that first one as a child because each memory makes new spots, new eraser marks in our lives.

So maybe getting a dust free slate is impossible, but honestly, is that what we really want? Do we want to have to go through all the steps again? New slates are intriguing just the way anything new is but I don’t want to forget uncontrollable laughter. I don’t want to forget peaks of pleasure I never quite knew could exist in such a bleak little town and time in my life. I don’t want to forget the way I was once loved. Forget that once upon a time, there was a hand that I could hold. Their hand. And in my memories, that hand was mine.

It is true that certain things would be easier in life if we could forget everything that ended up bringing us some type of pain but we might find ourselves more lost than ever if we had to forget those things that have come to comfort us and torture us all the same in the dark of restless night.

We are who we are. Without those memories, there’s just no way we’d be uniquely and incredibly the individuals we’ve come to be.

I’m keeping the memories, and the old slate along with that, in hopes that it will edge me forward into the future of whoever I am supposed to be. 

Spaniards have a saying I’ve deemed the theme of Spain: “No pasa nada.” It’s like Hakuna Matata; it means no worries.  So as fifty of us Americans and one Spanish tour guide traveled through Andalucía over the past few weeks, there was a set itinerary for the trip but everything ran according to the theme of Spain. “Oh you’re twenty minutes late for the bus? No pasa nada.” “Oh you failed your midterm? No pasa nada” (these are real examples, I kid you not.) The trip was fast paced but with this ease and tranquility that Americans like me find hard to adopt.  A structured chaos ran each day and I found myself falling in love with it. How nice to wake up in the morning and not have a complete idea of everything ever that might happen in the day? Where did the control freak go that detests unplanned and unscheduled days? I’m not sure, but I was in no rush to find her.

Here is the simple truth, I can’t lie to you. The past week and a half has been quite dream like. Traveling from La Alhambra in Granada to Costa del Sol for lunch on the beach and an adventure through a real life concrete jungle. Then on to being completely culture shocked and at a loss for words (because the various languages were killing me!) in Gibraltar, sleeping for a few hours, and camel riding through the simultaneously gorgeous and tragic Morocco.  By Friday we found our way to the historic and surreally beautiful Sevilla. Please, please stop all of your lives (all two of you who are reading) and go to Sevilla! It feels like time stops when you’re there… I’m sure the carriage ride through the city and the timeless Spanish tapas and sangria every night didn’t hurt that effect… Lastly we landed in Cordoba: quaint and picturesque; the perfect place to say goodbye to a truly life changing trip.

Somewhere along the way, maybe through all the pictures and loveliness of the town, I felt weight falling off of me. Each day I felt lighter and lighter. By the time I reached Sevilla, I thought I could fly.  And as the days flew by, I realized something new happening inside me. I felt myself constantly smiling. I’d fall to my bed, exhausted and in pain from the hours of walking up hills or on rocky roads but even in the dark I could feel my cheeky smile plastered across my face. And in the morning I’d awake, that same smile still holding on, impossible to dust off. What had happened to me?

Nothing significant really happened. I am still hurting. But I realized I am surviving. And today- this week- I’ve done more than just survive, I have thrived!

For the first time since I can remember I don’t have a clear grasp of anything pertaining to my future. I can plan no further than December. It’s the little battles though that win the war, isn’t it? My little battles that I won for today are these:

I know I am lost, but I am not afraid.

I’m still in love. Time, distance, it’s not going to change that.

Mostly though, I am happy. In this moment, no matter how long it last, this happiness is mine. And for once, that is actually okay.

When I found myself in that rut a month ago, I had a choice. I could wallow and be numb and for a while I was. But today, I want to breath! I want to feel!

There is a lesson, a truth in each moment of your life. That’s what I’ve made this blog about, finding that truth. Here’s what I learned today. These next few months, and the ones I’ve put behind me, have been a lesson in trust. I can’t plan past December, therefore I have to trust that things are falling together around me. I have to trust that if it isn’t falling together around me, I’ll be able to piece it together when I get there.

The trust is all a patience building exercise. I often feel helpless in my dorm room in Sagunto, thinking I am far away from everything I want. Even my basic needs feel hard to meet in what a friend of mine used to call the “shanty” I live in. But the thing is, not only should we not get everything we want, we don’t need it. I am slowly renewing my faith in a God who is all about knowing individually what we all need and supplying those exact things.

If I give my best effort and turn around to find that things don’t work out the way I plan, there’s a point where I have to stop, tell myself, “No pasa nada,” and just trust: trust in something much bigger than my “puny mind wanting to know.”

“Every day a choice is made.

Everyday I choose my fate.

And I wonder, ‘why would I wait till I die to come alive?’

I’m ready now.

I’m not waiting for the afterlife.”

As it goes in life, sometimes I find myself in a tough spot. I am sure I could come up with some really poetic way of describing this spot, but the truth is, sometimes I just get sad. Things begin happening in and around my life and the happenings occur in a way that I can’t fully appreciate or understand. These happenings, well the ones that lead me to feel this way, are always things that tend to be out of my control. They are things that deviate from my designated plan and there is no plan big or smart enough that I can develop that can bring things to the way I feel they are supposed to be. The images of what I thought my life would be come crashing down around me, breaking back into extinction, and I can feel myself breaking too.

At times, the happenings are all at once. Other times I watch things fall out of line, slowly, piercingly. Either way, I feel the sadness coming down on me. It’s almost as if every time I think I am comfortable or secure or content, those happenings happen. And then, without any warning, I find myself at my one lined, pathetic plea to God right before I fall asleep, “I can’t do it, so please You get me through the night.”

When I get there, to that low low place, I know I’ve got a few options left. The first option is that I can always pretend. I can shut every happening out of my life and pretend everything is okay. If I pretend, I can be numb for a while. I may not get to be happy but I don’t have to be sad.

The problem with numbness is that it can’t last. Put off feeling for as long as you like but we are human. Every heart beat, every breath, every blink of the eye is another chance to feel and be alive. Therefore, this option is often insufficient (and difficult to keep steady).

The next option is cynical but somehow my number one, “go to.” I can call it quits. I can stop hoping. My gut tells me this is the wisest decision but also that it is the easy way out.

How much better would life be if we were never disappointed?

How easy it would be to breathe if we knew there wasn’t one person who could hurt us?

How wonderful to never have to feel loss?

Often I try to go with option number two. I really want to feel invulnerable; I want to be hopeless and careless because honestly, I am tired. I am tired of watching friends pass away. I am tired of killing off the God of my childhood. I’m just…tired.

Unfortunately there is this foolish, naïve version of me that won’t let go. My mouth says, “I surrender.” But my heart, my heart keeps holding on; my heart waits. It’s sure that somewhere, just beyond my line of vision, there is something more, something better.

I think my heart holds on because it knows that the truth is, really bad things happen in life. As soon as you are sure, your heart might be broken all over again. You might find out that no matter how much you pray for healing for someone, God’s got other things in store for them. Eventually someone you look up to might pass away.

But what is life without hope?

What is love without the hope that someone will come through for you one day?

What is a bad night without the hope that one morning you will wake up to be okay?

What is death without the hope that there is something beautiful waiting for us when our eyes open all over, brand new again?

It is nothing.

To hope is to live.

Maybe you are wondering, “What is hope compared to pain, to loss, to death?”

A band called ‘Sleeping At Last’ told me the most beautiful thing I think I’ve heard all summer and that is, “The sweetest thing I’ve ever heard is that I don’t have to have all the answers, just a little light to call my own. Though it pales in comparison to the overarching shadows, a speck of light can reignite the sun and swallow darkness whole.”

I don’t know what you are going through, but just try this with me please. Let your hope be that speck of light.

With hope in your heart, no darkness will ever fully be able to consume you. 

Lately my life has felt like it’s in a constant state of flux. I thought that maybe it was the decade of my life I’ve just recently stepped into. I mentioned that to my mother and she informed me that it is not my twenties, it is just life. Period.

Time keeps pushing everything forward and I keep throwing things at it, trying my hardest to keep up, but I can feel it now, slipping through my fingers again.

I’ve been analyzing and over-analyzing the consistent and persistent changes in my life, trying to figure out the source of the issues in order to really fix them. Each change seems definitively different from the outside but dialing in, I’m beginning to see that they all spiral down to one commonality: Time.

How important, do you think, is it for people in relationships (Agape, Eros, Phila choose any you like) to simply be on the same page?

One of my closest friends and I have been so awkward lately. It isn’t that we don’t still have this love between us, but more recently it’s felt as if the love was having a hard time growing. We were taking care of it the way we always have in the past—showing up to old meeting places to talk, informing each other of the high lights of our lives, making time just to have fun—but it wouldn’t grow. How frustrating it felt to tend to this friendship as carefully as a gardener cares for its’ plants—making sure it gets enough sunlight and watering it daily—but somehow finding no petals blooming from the end of the stem at the end of the month.

Our friendship began in high school. We were swept together by this familial bond that was undeniable. Now, however, it felt like the only thing keeping us together, was the fact that once upon a time we used to share that. Sure, time had taught us things about each other and about ourselves, but what had time changed about us that made it difficult to even carry on a real conversation now?

Pause that thought for one second. Randomly, and on several different occasions, I was speaking to some girlfriends about what an appropriate age difference is in a relationship. A few of us have dated guys up to eight years our seniors but most of us have stayed within our 1-3 year age group. I compared all of our different relationships against the ages- seeing what worked and what didn’t. There wasn’t any clear sign that dating someone eight years older was somehow more detrimental to a relationship than dating someone a year younger than you. Even dating someone our age at this age seemed like more of a waste of time than batting lashes at older men but then my favorite Swift pointed something out to me: “Aaron and I are three years apart but our relationship doesn’t work or not work because of our age difference. It’s about the fact that we are both at the same place in our lives mentally. We couldn’t have worked when I was thirteen and he was sixteen. We couldn’t have worked even when I was fifteen and he was eighteen. It’s that now we are both in college, both have had serious relationships, and know what we want to do with our lives.” Of course, Swift was right. I’d met parachute guy a year before we ever began having regular conversations, but our lives didn’t allow us to really see each other (‘Avatar’ style haha) until later on, when somehow our lives coincidentally lined up for a night.

Timing is everything.

Now let’s apply this “Timing is everything” theory to my friendship. Yes, technically we were doing all the right things for a friendship to prosper but maybe, just maybe, we were in such different places in our lives that we’d lost one of the most important pieces of being someone’s friend: relating to one another. Our lives are on completely different levels. No one’s level is higher or greater than anyone elses, but being on different levels makes us foreigners to one another. We can’t speak to each others’ issues anymore because we can’t understand them. There are things I’ve been through that she’s yet to even imagine for herself and there are things she has conquered that I’m far from reaching. And as sad as it makes me to say this, slowly but surely I am learning, that’s kinda what life is all about.

But for the sake of hope, how can I fix something that is breaking right in front of my face? How can I revive the dying plant?

One of my biggest inspirations, Jon Foreman says metaphorically, “Every seed dies before it grows.”

I will hold on to that thought, reminding myself that some day, just as helplessly as we move apart now, we’ll shift to a new level, together, blooming and blossoming into the lily we’d always dreamed we’d be.

Tyler Knott: Words For Those That Remain

tylerknott:

There will come a time, a day, a moment
when words are not enough. When the letters
hooking to other letters and tying themselves
to each other, the trains of vowels and
consonants chasing each other out of my mouth
just won’t do justice to the avalanche
that you’re struggling through. If
this is…

…What I don’t understand about myself is that  I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I aboslutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary. 

But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decesions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. 

It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. parts of me covertly rebel and just when i least expect it, they take charge. 

I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?

The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. 

Romans 7:15-25

While on the subway in Paris this weekend I experienced a weird phenomenon. I sat across from the prettiest girl. As I looked her in her blue blue eyes, I had a flashback. At six years old I transferred to a little elementary school in Beltsville, Maryland. I thought myself very tough prior to going there, but upon arrival I got the first day jitters that I still get to this day. I walked into Mrs. Jefferson’s first grade class and searched the room for my nametag.

Once finding my name, I sat down at my desk. I closed my eyes and tried being invisible. New schools are scary! New anything can be scary sometimes.

“Hi!” A little voice squeaked at me.

I looked up, anxious to meet the person who could see past my invisibility cloak. When I looked up, there were blue eyes staring at me. Blue blue eyes.

I waved at her.

“I’m Alex! What’s your name?” She was so excited to just be telling me her name. It was hard to resist the conversation.

“I’m Monique.”

That was that. Four sentences and for nearly eight years we were inseparable. There was only happiness between us growing up because together we were anything we wanted to be. Monday we were astronauts, blasting off into space on the metal rocket ship built on Beltsville’s playground. By Tuesday we’d be acrobats, swinging as high as possible before back flipping off the swing and landing safely on the ground. Wednesday we were archeologists, looking for ancient artifacts in the sand box. By Thursday we were exercise instructors using the tires as our yoga mats. And on Friday we’d be football stars, beating the boys in two-hand touch. We’d go our separate ways for the weekend but the weekdays were ours.

It wasn’t really till the year we had to actually separate that I realized we’d spent most of our lives together becoming who we were. When we left elementary, we promised to be best friends forever (don’t pretend you’ve never done the same). When we promised, I know we meant it but I don’t think we had any idea the elements we were up against. Just time alone can change anything, but time AND separation? They tend to be the impenetrable pair.

So if you couldn’t guess, in high school over the years we separated. There was no significant thing that happened just one day I woke up and I was referring to her as “an old friend of mine” rather than “my best friend.” I didn’t know when it had happened, but somehow my best friend had become someone I used to know. Though I looked for conclusions, there was no one to blame, time and separation had played their part and I hadn’t put up much of a fight.

Fast forward to the beginning of this summer. My blue-eyed childhood friend wrote me. Turns out we were both going to study abroad in Spain for the summer. It was good news because I didn’t want to go to Spain alone but it also scared me. What if we didn’t really like each other anymore? What if we didn’t have anything in common? We hadn’t been to school together in six years. How much could really have stayed the same?

It is funny how unpredictable life can be. When we saw each other for the first time in Spain, we just hugged. Naturally we fell back into our habit of being inseparable. Though we haven’t spent all summer pretending to be anything we’re not, we have spent it making dreams come true. Those blue eyes I stared into on the train in Paris were the same ones I saw fourteen years ago sitting at the desk across from me.

I used to have this idea that being best friends with someone meant them knowing everything that is happening in your life. But I am realizing the older I get how wrong that theory is because here I am years later laughing with Alex for absolutely no reason at all, the same way we did when we were 6 years old.

Maybe time spent isn’t the only thing that makes a friendship real. Maybe real friendships are defined by that unextinguishable spark that hasn’t burned out since it was first ignited inside your heart.

If you are separated from the ones you love, by distance or time, try this: replay the little pictures in your mind of all the best memories just as a reminder.

I know Paris and Spain and Maryland and anywhere else we decide to travel in the next two weeks will always be mine. 

• Question: Moni you are such a great writer!!! You are so far beyond anyone your age or mine when it comes down to your thinking! I absolutely love your blog - hardly-fadedme
• Answer:

  Thank you for reading!!!!! I don’t know if that’s true or not (the me being beyond my years thing) but I am glad you think so! lol No really i appreciate your support. love you Chris.