Little Treasures

When I was young, I collected tiny, shiny things. Inside a small music box, I kept a random array of little treasures: a black sequin that fell from my mom's dress, a stray color-light that wedged itself into the carpet, a silver button that probably belonged to someone's sweater. There were earring and broken thumbtacks and colorful strands of thread. I remember putting in a birthday candle and a pink eraser, and a small piece of plastic I grabbed only because it was gold. I sought out small tokens of joy, little slices of light and color. It's not that I did anything with them, really. Every once in a while, I'd open the lid to survey my stock, pulling each tiny, forgotten thing from the box and arranging them on the windowsill in my bedroom just so. Then I'd put all the gleaming, vibrant gems of garbage back into my music-turned-treasure box. (Maybe I kept small pictures of Justin Timberlake in there, too, but that's not the point)

The point's that I actively, purposefully searched for beautiful, charming things to pocket. When I was young, I looked for little slivers of joy to call my own, and I still do. In a different way, I still do, because more and more I've come to understand my own responsibility in finding joy. I understand happiness as a choice, and how happiness comes from making choices.

Recently, I was having a not-good day. A day of spilled coffee, sad news, and some truly unfortunate timing. I could tell early on that something within me wanted to wallow in the gloom, and as I got home, I had every intention of crawling under the covers and turning up my melancholy, rainy-day playlist.

A stripe of sunlight stopped me, though. It's shimmering across my bed, the room all aglow, and I thought, a cup of tea, Aemy. I brewed a cup of English breakfast tea, I opened up one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors, and I went straight to my favorite chapter, rereading my favorite lines. When I was finished, I picked up the phone and called someone, and I told him what I was doing, why I was calling, what I know to be true: happiness is a practice. A collection of tiny, shiny things in our everyday that make it feel just a little bit like magic, like something we should treasure.

On Friendship

The best part about growing up in a small town is the inevitability of close, lifelong friendships. The sense of community is overwhelming. Everything feels familiar. Some shops are owned by family friends, you spot your kindergarten teacher at the post office, and you can't quite do errands without running into at least 3 people you know. The togetherness, it's a physical thing, too.

For me, that reality of lifelong connections has led to a clear, specific quality of friendship, namely, that it lasts forever. A sense of closeness, to me, comes from knowing anything and everything. From knowing each other's families and homes, from sharing meals and holidays and traditions. To me, the border between friendship and family is so thin and insignificant so as not to exist at all.

It's been interesting, then, to make friends later in life, to leave that small-town environment and try to establish forever with fresh faces. In college and ever since, I've found that I do everything I can to fill in the backstory between me and another person. My friends could list all my clearest memories from elementary school, high school. They could call out every heartbreak, every small victory. There's not a name they wouldn't recognize, not a story they couldn't retell, and I could point out all of theirs, too, because that's the kind of friendship I love: where all the lines between yours and mine are blurred, where everything becomes shared even if it wasn't at the time.

Of course, that may not work for everyone. That sort of open-book, become-part-of-my-family kind of connection can sometimes feel like too much for a person. Truth is, I find that all-out familiarity comforting, though, as if building a forever is the only way. Or at least the truest.

I'd love to know: Do you feel the same? What defines your ideal friendship?

Show Up and Break Open

Here's the thing, I am trying to show up for life. I'm trying to give voice to my days. Trying to break open. But right now, my life's in a middle-ground. It's neither here nor there. Frankly, I'm exhausted.

Yesterday, I was sick and slept all day. It was the strangest sensation to watch an entire 24 slip by and to be an observer of my life and not a participant. Yesterday was a fog, a veiled face and an unassuming moment. I woke up at 10, perhaps I'll feel better at noon. Then it was a quarter to 1 and I was uncomfortable. I stood up and almost fell over. I went into another room and curled up on a couch. How are you feeling? Better, I said, when I really meant worse. Sickness does something to your head. Mine shook.

I laid down on the couch and when I woke up next, it was 4. I wasn't sure where I was. I heard voices and couldn't place them to faces. I was going to do yoga this evening, I laughed and moaned and rolled over. When I looked at the clock next, it was almost 7. In a span of 10 minutes, the light in the room went from butter yellow to deep blue shadows like the evening was a bruise heavy under the skin. My stomach hurt but my head felt better. I fell asleep again. Then it was 8 and afterwards 9 and I ate sandwich, watched Running Man, and finished the day like I had started it, asleep.

This morning I woke up and felt better. Not perfect, but better. Side note, isn't that the case with almost everything in life? I feel better, but not perfect. Digressing. And mulling. Besides feeling better, I also felt panicked. It was irrational but the thought of missing 24 hours of my life set me into a frenzy. 24 hours.

Sometimes life's really hard. That's an understatement. Writing about it seems like trying to collect water by pouring it through a sieve. Everything runs through me and I wonder, where to begin? Or, why? What's the balance between over sharing and being honest, and is there a disconnect that lies with the two? What happens when you have nothing to write at all, or what you have to say is boring, underwhelming, inherently ordinary? What then?

Sometimes, it seems like too much. I'm inundated with things I need to say, words that crawl under my skin, moments that leave me open-handed, chasing wind. Other times, I'm a dry well, scraped raw and emptied of everything. Then I say to life, pour into me, in all your beauty and pain and joy. That's when life asks, will you give back? And there lies the act of showing up. Morning and morning. Returning to the page. Returning to the road, to the pavement, to the poetry, to the music, to the rhythm of your life. So I do and we do and we hope to make something honest, something that matters, in our 24 hours.

Because, goodness, I don't want to live my life asleep.

Like A Fool

We take a chance from time to time

And put our necks out on the line

And you have broken every promise that we made

And I have loved you anyway

Took a fine time to leave me hangin' out to dry

Understand now I'm greivin'

So don't you waste my time

Cause you have taken

All the wind out from my sails

And I have loved you just the same

We finally find this

Then you're gone

Been chasin' rainbows all along

And you have cursed me

When there's no one left to blame

And I have loved you just the same

And you have broken every single fucking rule

And I have loved you like a fool

Words to Live By

Between what is said and not meant, and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost. | Kahil Gibran

Someone once asked me what I regarded as the three most important requirements for happiness. My answer was: A feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you; a feeling that you have done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work; and the ability to love others. | Eleanor Roosevelt

What wonderful thing didn't start out scary? | Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies

Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it. | Rainer Maria Rilke

We don't learn to love each other well in the easy moments. Anyone is good company at a cocktail party. But love is born when we misunderstand one another and make it right, when we cry in the kitchen, when we show up uninvited with magazines and granola bars, in an effort to say, I love you. | Shauna Niequist, Bread & Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table, with Recipes

The sad truth is that man's real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites - day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil. We are not even sure that one will prevail against the other, that good will overcome evil, or joy defeat pain. Life is a battleground. It always has been, and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end. | Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols

One hears it a lot on airplanes: "Make sure you have your own mask on, before helping others with theirs." | Lemony Snicket, on what is the best life advice