outside the box

wow, its so beautiful outside. I don't miss the summer, i'm rather enjoying the sunshine mixed with a cool breeze. Granted, its getting dark earlier which isn't always cool, but i guess that means more time for star-gazing! haha... hopeless romantic i am.

i'm reading catcher in the rye for the first time. The guy is such an NF gone wrong, i relate but then like look at better ways to feel the way he does yet enjoy life and not always be depressed by it. You know, its real important to appreciate life. not just life, but the people in your life, not just the people in your life, but what the people in your life are doing, how their feeling, how their changing, how their changing you, how you're changing them. Just to step back and appreciate that is an amazing accomplishment, if i can call it an accomplishment. I mean, really, I realize how incredibly impacted i am by friends i love, and it makes me feel so empowered.

I forget what the quote was from the previews of "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" but it was something to the extent of, "if you want to change the world, be changed by the world." And that is tight to me, because if you ever wonder if what you do is at all changing/influencing others or making a difference, one thing rob used to respond with is the question- "are you effected/influenced/changed by other people?" and its like of course i am! And that kind of answers it. I mean if you can honestly say another person has changed you or opened up a new side of you or whatever, then you can know that its possible and you're mostlikely contributing to others.

If we spend all our life saying "this isn't good enough" and cracking jokes that demean the greatness in other people, we're never going to let those people in. We're always going to be disappointed, wishing for something else. And sometimes i just think that instead of staying there in the disappointment and the cynical/pessimistic mindset-- we can actually do something. We can be the person to love and reach out and try new things and become hopeful about all that we pursue.

call me someone thats in love with change and growing and idealism or whatever the hell you wanna call me, but things really can work out, there is a way to genuinely be happy, no matter how much your brain works to find the bad news.

now theres a flipside, and i dont know if i should bother going there, but pain is real too. it's so real, like pain is where most of my music comes from which is weird but i think thats part of what makes it easy to connect with because anyone who lives or pushes limits or whatever is going to experience pain. as an amazing friend of mine put it "it's okay to be blue". and it is.

because eventually the tables turn and you're back in control, not of the way you feel, but of the way you act and the way you perceive the world. So many possibilities, where you are is everything, and where you are changes. it's cool.

i was talking to linnaea (a new found friend/youth group leader) today after youth group, just saying like christains want to have "the truth" and maybe we just have a part of it and so do other religions. But to take that a step further, i think people say we have the truth and think that the truth is some great thing like its a positive thing to have. But the truth can be really sucky too. i mean what if the truth is that war is necessary, or something crazy that i dont want to be true. in that sense you cant really own the truth at all. you just cant own it. You can tap into it or be exposed to it but owning it isn't something i think we're meant to do. and i'm cool with that.

i kind of hate that within christainity- people who experience freedom in areas that are "sin-zones" are looked at as cheaters or careless or as people that are just ignoring the bible. I don't like that view at all; to me it's like because i care and i want to live, i'm open to looking outside my religion and outside christain statements i'm not comfortable making (that sometimes seem to be at the core of christianity, in the church atleast). So most people are scared of that, because if i dont believe my friends are going to hell, then i'm not really a christain, or if i dont think jesus is the be all and end all, then i'm not really a christain. But what if thats not the most important thing to be? and by questioning and being brave enough to step away, its like showing people that its possible to believe new things, we're not stuck.

We're never stuck, it's just a question of whether being stuck is worse than trying something new. and if we're brave enough to untangle ourselves from what's holding us down. Extricate ourselves from those statements we're not ready to make.


we live such powerful lives man, i dont know if you realize it. just don't be afraid of that.

Jodi