To the Dreamer

This is to the dreamer.

For those of you who go to sleep at night wishing for a better life and for those of you wishing to be someone else, I give you this.

When everyone else tells you to change your ways, your clothes, your beliefs, and everything else about you to the point where your skin is stretched a little too tight – breathe. I want you to know there are people out there who believe the same way you do and there are people who go to sleep at night and pray for better lives like you do.

Even though I could sit here and tell all of you there are people out there who have worse lives than you do, and I could tell all of you there are people who only dream of the lives you live, I won’t. What will that do to help you? That will only make you feel worse for feeling that way and it will probably make you dream harder for a better life. When you seep into a hole and you feel like you will never overcome your climb, then I want you to remember this:

I may not be your God, and I may not be your Buddha, but I can tell you who I am. I will understand who you are and I will not degrade you for what you did in your past. I will never judge you; nor will I forsake you in a desperate time of need. I will never resent you for judging or degrading another. I will, however, listen to you.

Some of you may say, “Who does she think she is? Is she trying to be a therapist? Does she think she is better than all of us?” No, I do not; I merely want to say there are too many hurtful people in this world for us to spread unnecessary hate. When do we stop and question our actions? At what point in our lives do we say, “This needs to stop”? Do we wait until the junior high student at the local school hangs himself while his parents are at work? Or do we wait until his best friend goes to school one day and shoots the girl next to him in English for making his life terrible enough for him to commit suicide?

I vow to stop this now. It only takes one person’s belief and one person’s first step to begin a trend. This trend leads down a road toward a world filled with more love than hate, and a world filled with more understanding and less judging.

This is for the dreamer. We are here for you.

This is also to the people. It is up to you to start this trend.

Nature is Art

We all go through similar routines.

Every day, we wake up, eat some sort of breakfast, shower, get dressed, go to school or work (sometimes both), then repeat the same daily routine over, and over, and over.

Do we ever stop to look at nature and the little lives within it? Do we ever breathe a deep breath of fresh air just to truly take in and acknowledge all that life has to offer? Maybe most of us are too transfixed in our new technology and we do not notice the steady hum of the wind sweeping through the grass or the little squirrel who chases his friend around a tree.

Lives are changing and technology is evolving – I get that. I understand the need for updated forms of phones and gadgets so we can keep up with the daily pace of new information and new lives; however, is there not also a need for a break from the hustle and bustle of school, work, social networking, and the lives of celebrities? What if we each took a day to truly experience the art of living? Maybe then we would see how the the sun glistens along the sweeping movements of the stream or the way the rays shine off the dewdrops in the early morning grass. Maybe then we would appreciate the art of life.

Every day, nature amazes me in so many ways. The pureness of the lives within and the surprising events which take place because of it happen while we sink into the latest technology. Sometimes, we consume ourselves too much with the stresses of our everyday lives. If we just stop to take a moment to appreciate it, then (maybe) we will understand what should remain important in our lives.

Breathe in the fresh air. Take a walk through the woods. Bury your feet in the sand.

Plans Do Not Always Go As Planned

Growing up, I was one of those kids who always made lists for everything she did – games at sleepovers, ideas for the weekends, food to have, etc. This piece of my character followed me through elementary school as I made lists for birthday parties, through junior high as I made lists for future careers, but then it stopped in high school. I realized there was no need for me to figure out what I wanted to do with my life because writing was my passion. It is my passion. It has been my entire life since I picked up a pencil as a child and then it bloomed once I took a writing class in jr. high. Even if everything goes wrong in my day, when I hit my sheets at night and open up a journal or my laptop and form strings of words, metaphors, or even simple phrases, then every bad aspect of that day disappears – they do not even matter.

Even so, my mind is more confused than ever. I do not have a plan, I do not want to be a journalist, and I most certainly do not want to settle for anything less than what I deserve. I mean, what is the point of a career if you do not enjoy it? Is building life on the foundation of happiness not in the cards for me? Journalism has always been my plan. Sometimes, I wish an owl would just swoop down in front of my face with a letter tied to his ankle with the career I should pursue in a little scrawled-out script. Then, BAM! I'd have my life planned out again.

Although, maybe this is what needs to happen. I had my entire future planned out, but then I lost sight of what else I enjoyed. Throughout high school, I shouted out to the entire world I wanted to be the next travel writer for National Geographic or the next feature writer for Cosmopolitan. I never actually sat down and realized my problem: I hate interviewing people. Do you know what else I hate? Prying into other people's personal lives. What do journalists do? Well, they interview and pry, of course!

I believe this moment is a moment that changes a lot of people my age. We get into college with a firm plan of what we want to do for the rest of our lives, but then we realize we really do not want that. We just realize it is the safest route since it has always been the plan, and it has always been something we believed would make us the happiest.