Happiness

(Me and the sea.:)


"With arms wide open
Under the sunlight
Welcome to this place
I'll show you everything
With arms wide open
Now everything has changed
I'll show you love
I'll show you everything

With arms wide open..." -Creed

Is there a more fitting way to greet life? Experiences? Each other? Love?
What if we weren't afraid? What if we acted on our joyful impulses more? Our childlike spontaneity? What if we didn't put these things aside to become "respectable" adults?

"This "strength", this autonomy, this...adulthood...
It's such an unremarkable, lonely feat.
To sacrifce your joy, your wonder
For social regulations,
Society's expectations.
And it is all of these senseless limitations
That leave the truth of who you once were, broken at your feet." - (C.W. 2000)

Growth is beautiful, difficult, and necessary. We must actively strive to never stop growing in who we are, in faith, in belief, in our love and relationships. In maturity. But maturity has nothing to do with laughing less or settling more or being what others expect you to be. Maturity has nothing to do with having matching towels and a perfect home and being a certain age. It has to do with wisdom, with recognizing pain and disappointment exist but choosing to seek joy. Maturity is assurance, a striving to become. A love of self and others. Kindness. The ability to look honestly at oneself. To enjoy simple pleasures. To look for the good in others. Being gentle with yourself. Recognizing the fragility of people, of life. Cherishing, treasuring, and perhaps greeting the world around us with arms and hearts wide open.

If there is one thing I want to actively seek in the new year, it is joy. Joy, regardless of circumstance. Even if things around me seem all wrong. Joy when I'm hurting, lonely, offended, angry. Pleasure in everyday life. Joy in who I am and in others. Joy that is unshakable. I want to grow in it, to have it fill my heart...I want to give it away. To be able to smile not only when things are going well when I loose 10 pounds and everything is going my way but to keep that same joy in hard times as well. To understand it is not dependent on anything outside myself.

I wish you all the same. That 2011 is a year of growth, of healing what needs to be healed and letting go of what weighs us down. I wish you peace, love, meaning, adventure, fun, laughter, beauty, strength, courage, and of course, joy. :)

Carpe diem, Gorgeous.

Love, C.

Singing In The Night And Crying On The Elevator

Here are two tales from me to you. Do you believe that they are true?

Singing In The Night (Norway):

You know the sort of feeling when you wake up feeling as though "something" woke you? That the waking was too unnatural to simply be your own body telling you you've had enough sleep?
Eyes fly open, heart beats quickly...startled into a stillness that is as alert as some ancient instinct that we've mostly long forgotten.
I don't move a muscle. I quiet my breathing.
There is a woman's voice floating down the hallway. High and unusual. Singing steadily in a language I don't understand.
My body tenses and then relaxes and I tell myself "it's only your imagination...a fragment from a dream you just had..."
But a chill settles over my body despite the warmth in the room and I actually feel each individual hair on my arms standing on end and there is no pause in the singing from down the hall.

Crying on the Elevator (Sri Lanka):

There were two elevators in the elegant hotel. I could see by the bright red numbers changing rapidly on the panel on the wall that both were on their way to the floor I waiting on. One reached the main floor and I waited for the doors to open. They didn't. I heard pounding from inside so I leaned into the door and asked "Are you alright?" as I pressed the open door button on the outside. Nothing. The pounding continued along with frantic crying now. It sounded like a child and there was no comforting adult voice speaking reassurances so I assumed the child was alone. "It's ok, just hang on a second...the doors will open." The crying continued, broken and afraid. A man walked up to where I was waiting and I asked him "Do you hear that too?" He listened and said "Yes, that's very strange." While he waited with the elevator I ran to the front desk and explained "The elevator must be stuck, it's been on this floor for several minutes now but the doors won't open and there is someone screaming and crying inside it." The man behind the desk stared at me in disbelief but came with me to the where the other man was waiting still. "It's this elevator" I said pointing "Do you hear the crying?" The hotel worker pressed the button to open the door (as I had done several times to no avail), and for him the doors opened immediately. There was no one inside. The worker turned to me and smiled condescendingly as though I was just another demanding, hysterical customer to indulge. I shrugged awkwardly "I just thought I heard someone..." I said as he walked away. I turned to the man who had been waiting with me..."You did hear something right?" "Yes" he replied "that was definitely weird."
And it definitely was. ;)

Grace in the Going

Mandal, Norway


Do you know something? A secret? Something yours alone?
That you can hold loosely in your open palm? Or tightly in your fist?
A memory you can cherish, smile at, then let go of and send up into the chilly, distant sky?
Watch it scatter and flutter down around you like snowflakes caught in the blue-shine of a glittering December night?
Like tears too perfect to not be treasured?
Something lost temporarily that whispers to you of light?

Or maybe you know something the whole world knows too.
At its most vulnerable.
In the depths of its heart when it closes its eyes to sleep.
Maybe you see there is something fragile
...unutterably, unbearably, unimaginably...
Beautiful in each soul that will close its eyes tonight?
That will close its eyes and begin to leave a world so white with snow.

As if each snowflake were a gift.
Were a secret.
Tossed with joy by a careless hand into the air.

As if each soul were beloved, treasured and cherished.
Were created by an artist-God.
Tenderly, with the greatest love and utmost care.
As if each soul were a great work of beauty and art.
As if each soul were rare.



Rest in peace, dear Nils.

Nothing You Can Measure Anymore

Leonard Cohen. For his voice alone, I could love him. But for me it's much more than that. It's his honesty. His courage in saying the things that too many people dare not say because it's uncomfortable, because it isn't the mindlessly accepted and repeated cliches that we so favor in our mindless and cliche society. His words can sometimes be brutal, sometimes vulgar, sometimes humorous, sometimes so achingly profound and deeply beautiful that I catch my breath. It is not an exaggeration to say that musically and poetically, he is a balm to my spirit. I can listen to him, totally absorb his lyrics and heal because I know that someone out there in this reality-TV-loving, shallow and vapid conformist's world is still alive. Still searching. Still noticing. I love his music. His poetry. His way of seeing.

Culturally I consider the Western world faint of heart. Spineless and silly. Vicious and vulgar and largely uncultured and unrefined. A culture of overexposure. A culture where nothing is sacred or private. A culture without depth or measure. A culture in decline.

Conformity is the order of the day. We don't speak to one another, we nose about on Facebook to get the latest. We dress alike. We share the same sense of outrage at anything remotely unique or different or challenging. We take a new picture of our own face everyday for...who knows why? I venture to guess because we are vain and have very little to concern ourselves with.

I have just one question. How many people do we know who truly are themselves? Can you count them on one hand? Two? Three fingers maybe? I'm lucky, I know many but perhaps that's because I actively seek them out. I have never settled. When it comes to friends, I want the best and I will have that or nothing. I don't mean the prettiest and most popular, or the ones with the best wardrobes or most money, I mean the "good souls", the people who are honest and seeking what's right. I don't mean perfect people, I mean real people. People who understand life is more than celebrity gossip and crude jokes, more than casual sex and formal dinners. People who journey through life and grow...whose eyes I can look into and see they also understand...who I can laugh with, talk for hours with and with whom love is an unconditional term.

Although it's true I want more than most people offer, I am not asking too much. I don't much care for society's moral compass, but there again, I'm not going to lower my expectations. If I am "different" or "old fashioned", well when I consider the alternatives, there is nothing I would rather be.

"Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul." - The Future (Leonard Cohen)