taking control

it's so important to get up in the morning and feel good about the first thing you do, it sets the tone for a wonderful day to follow. yesterday was the prime example, i woke up, took a shower, and walked around the woods of LC campus with my guitar on my back and my journal in my purse and wound up sitting in the rose garden playing guitar and writing some poetry. nothing too incredible, i kept reverting back to this phrase i've been singing to: "if less is more, then i want more"
(which is like saying I want less.. but not exactly...) anyway, this was very soothing for my introversion, and also for my beauty-meter, if i can call it that... It's so easy for us to leave all these intangible yet really really important things out of our conversations and thoughts. Things like BEAUTY or LOVE or community or justice or expression or inspiration or growth or character. stuff that we all know exists, but its hard to point at these attributes blindly so we often forget how real they are and how important they are to our state of being.

whats cool about life is that we can indulge in beauty and love and growth and inspiration through our choices. We decide what to do, who to spend time with, how we spend our time, what we read, what impact what we read has on our lives, what we contemplate... but as many intelligent people that came before us, theres some quote i cant remember that basically says that its a matter of what we do with hardship that determines our character, because in times of hardship we feel much more limited and are forced to make bigger/more difficult decisions. i guess, then, other days of making conscious decisions to feed our hunger for meaning and life and beauty, and creating that sort of habit well give us the kind of energy we need to be able to process through things. that's my hope at least.

i feel like my blog might start turning into how i'm managing to think about the types of things that were challenged through going to church and being a christian, now that i'm not so concerned with the church part (but i'm still concerned with how to feed my appetite for truth and meaning). will the two ends merge back together into some new-found belief or decision upon religion? i'm not quite sure. but i do know that there are things in this world i need to do to keep myself going, and doing those things frees me up to be able to give to other people and not be insecure, and be able to smile and say hello to random people on campus without being concerned about anything-- because i have gained my energy from the beauty in the world, and its reflected in my composure, in my emotional state, in my comfort with myself.

ben lee knows what i mean--- "wake up, and do it, whatever it is." life is much fuller that way.


don't you think?