HAPPY HELLO
Every year, November 21 is World Hello Day. The objective is to say hello to ten people on the day. By greeting others, the message is for world leaders to use communication rather than force to settle conflicts.
So ... Hello!
The event began in 1973 by Brian and Michael McCormack in response to the conflict between Egypt and Israel. Since then World Hello Day has been observed by people in 180 countries. It has garnered accolades from notable individuals around the globe including politicians, religious leaders, and celebrities.
Hope, Endurance, Inspiration
Life, by definition, comes with struggle. How we embrace this struggle defines us; it is forms our character.
Brian Boyle is an example for all of us. He is testament to the cliché, “ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.”
Last October, Brian fulfilled his dream of competing in a triathlon (a 2.4 mile ocean swim, followed by a 112 mile bicycle ride, ending with a 26.2 mile marathon). A triathlon is a grueling test of endurance, physicality and motivation for even the greatest athletes. For Brian it took a little more; it took coming back from the dead – literally. Eight times.
On July 6, 2004, one month after graduating from high school, Brian’s 1994 Chevy Camaro was hit by a dump truck on the driver's side door. The impact of the crash demolished the car; it took the Jaws of Life to pry Brian out. His heart was knocked across his chest and he lost 60 percent of his blood. He suffered a broken clavicle, ribs and pelvis, and severe nerve damage to his left shoulder. Almost all the bones in his body were broken. Doctors were also worried about the possibility of brain damage.
Brian actually died eight times before doctors resuscitated him. Due to the extreme trauma he suffered, doctors chose to put Brian in a chemically induced coma. On life support for two months, he lost 100 pounds. His parents stood over his bed and wept; he was told he might never walk again. He endured paralysis, pneumonia, infections, seizures, CAT scans, MRIs and excruciating pain.
But although Brian’s heart was pushed aside, it never lost its electric spark – his strength came from within. Three years later Brian competed in the triathlon in Hawaii.
"This is like a dream come true for me," Brian said. "To be competing in the biggest triathlon event in the world is an awesome experience and I am so grateful for the people who made this possible."
Brian, we are grateful to you for your story. You have given so many of us perspective and inspiration. You physical strength comes in as a close second to your human resolve and perseverance. Thank you for being a beacon of light for human kind. It’s beauty in its purest form.
Thanks to Ellen for sharing Brian’s story.
Bukowski Genius:So You Want To Be a Writer
Recently my boyfriend turned me onto the genius of Charles Bukowski.
Bukowski was a drunk, a womanizer, and ugly as hell. But he knew it. And he was true to himself and his voice.
I've just finished reading Post Office and Women. Like booze, sex and chocolate for the reader's soul - it's addictive and inspiring.
This poem, however, is like all square meals in one. I feel like it is written just for me. Or for you. I guess that's what makes it brilliant.
so you want to be a writer?
by Charles Bukowski
if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money
or fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.
don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.
I Call it Word Doodling
This is what I do when I’m on the phone
and the laptop is on my lap
and I don’t have wireless internet.
I call it MS Word Doodling.
Creatively Pathetic.
Rigid, geometric, predictable, confining.
I expect more from myself.
and the laptop is on my lap
and I don’t have wireless internet.
I call it MS Word Doodling.
Creatively Pathetic.
Rigid, geometric, predictable, confining.
I expect more from myself.
The Stars Say I May Get Buzz
Dear Galina,
Here is your horoscope for Tuesday, November 18:
It's the best possible day for you to try to attract attention -- it should come to you with very little effort on your part, actually! You might get as much buzz as a major celebrity at some point.
Well that's good news.
I guess that means I have to leave my house. While my apartment building gets a power wash (for the last few months and for the next few months), I have been journeying to the Public Library to write.
Today I will wear heels and make-up and see if I can trick the staff (and dwellers) of the 96th Street branch of the New York Public Library into thinking I'm Minnie Driver. (They say we look alike.)
I could use some buzz.
Celebrate Every Day!
Happy I have no idea what's going to happen tomorrow Day!
Celebrate the unknown, celebrate the mystery, celebrate life.
Oh Happiness, Where Art Thou?
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Happy Birthday! Happy New Year! Happy first something, happy last something, happy anniversary of your first or your last something! Humans love to wish each other happiness. And why not? Our country bestows us with, upon other rights, the pursuit of HAPPINESS. We are entitled and we want to claim it! There is a new breed among us – the self-realized happy seekers.
With the media forcing traditional snapshots of happiness down our throats, it’s no wonder we emerge from a hypnotic haze yearning for those very cliché images. It takes an extraordinarily strong and self-motivated person to see beyond the brainwashing and unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits all solution to this overly complicated equation.
Sometimes we have gone too long without happiness that we have forgotten what it looks like; we don’t even recognize it when it surrounds us. We have mistaken comfort for happiness and we have accepted money in lieu of happiness. We think we are happy because we are getting more, going further, earning more, checking things off the list. We go and go – sometimes like we’re climbing a mountain and sometimes like we’re running on a hamster wheel. Seldom do we stop to ask – are we happy? Do we even know what makes us happy?
Life is like the Goliath and we are the Davids. We are bred to persevere and to survive. Sometimes our limits will be pushed and our boundaries will be tested. We may feel so overwhelmed like we’re perpetually swimming upstream. We may get hopeless and powerless and we may find ourselves diving head first into a life full of anxiety and depression.
Depression has become as common a diagnosis as the common cold. It has infiltrated our society, affecting rich and poor, men and women, adults and children. Depression propaganda has permeated into our homes with messages on TV, ads in magazines, posters in the subway stations. They tell us the symptoms and tell us where to go to get help (hint: prescription drugs). They tell us that it hurts everyone around us. So we want to fix it.
We are an impatient breed and want instant gratification; antidepressants offer a quick (often temporary) solution. Really they are like scotch tape when you need crazy glue. Antidepressants are the most-prescribed drugs in our country. Last year, American doctors wrote 232.7 million prescriptions for antidepressants to an estimated 30 million patients who spent over $12 billion dollars looking for happiness in a tablet.
Incidentally, researchers have concluded that happy pills benefit only the most severely depressed patients, whereas they are only as effective as a placebo for those who are mildly or moderately depressed. Translation: many of those currently hooked on happy pills would save a lot of money by switching from Prozac to Tic Tacs. Drugs will numb the pain, but not remove it.
Depression is a chronic illness – something you have to monitor all the time, much like a diet. We have to put ourselves on a happy maintenance program. Discover which of life’s morsels make us happy and interweave them, like vitamins, into our lives.
There is a sub-category of happy seekers: American women. It’s the modern version of the midlife crisis and countless over-achieving women are confronting at different times. In our 20s or our 60s. One day we discover that we have stumbled off the path we were (often blindly) following. We may have been pushed off the path; we may have jumped off the path. Different causes, same effect: we find ourselves lost and confused.
We cross days off the calendar governed by a perpetual To Do list that usually follows the formula of cross one thing off, add two more to the bottom. We resist the urge to say no because we somehow internalize that as failure. We make promises to everyone but ourselves because we know that those are the hardest to keep. We carry a thin satchel full of heavy burdens and like all things fragile, eventually we break.
Women often place themselves on the back of a long line of candidates competing for the dangling carrot of happiness. In front of us stand our children, our husbands, our parents, our households, our communities, our jobs.
But eventually everyone gets to that day. Life will bitch-slap you in the face – just when you are down. Then it will sucker-punch you in the stomach. And when it really wants to prove a point, life will kick your sorry ass to the curb. Sometimes it feels like our lives have been ripped apart so badly, it leaves a visible tear.
But life lessons seldom come without pain. In fact, they bring with them all sorts of emotional baggage – anger, resentment, frustration. We want our turn at the happiness wheel – but somehow we’ve forgotten how to steer the beast. Like stroke victims of life, some of us have to re-learn how to be happy.
We must give in to the fact that we cannot control everything. It's no coincidence it's the mantra for every 12-step program. We must permit ourselves to find our happiness, but we have to overcome our hurdles. Especially the guilt hurdle. Women lug a collective gender burden; we find ourselves enduring the same struggles as our mothers and grandmothers. We still over-give and under-take.
Why do we feel guilty being happy?
Maybe because we see so many people who aren’t. Maybe we have a martyr gene. Maybe our happiness comes at the expense of someone else. Maybe we feel guilty about the source of our happiness. We have to let it go; this guilt is our paralytic. This is where we do have control.
We have to allow ourselves to feel happy. We have to stop punishing ourselves for mistakes of the past. We have to stop regretting bad decisions and start learning from them. We have to forgive ourselves. We have to learn to embrace our instincts and trust our decision making abilities. If we let fear cripple us from taking a risk, we are allowing ourselves to be trapped in lead boots at the bottom of an ocean of problems. If we do not put value on our happiness, the world won’t either.
In any situation, we can choose to be proactive or we can be choose to be reactive. Choosing happiness is proactive; letting life choose for us is reactive. It is our job to modify the actives; the door will not open if you do not knock on it.
Essential in this quest for happiness is a fundamental shift we have to make in our thinking. Confronting difficult situations, we can either employ the defeatist “why me?” thinking or we can empower ourselves by transforming it into the “me because…” thinking. There is usually a silver lining; sometimes it’s just harder to find. It's our job to sift out the happiness.
Life is an uncertain terrain we travel blindfolded. No one is there at the end to pull off the blindfold in a grand reveal moment. Any moment can be illuminating. Any moment can be enlightening. Any moment can add periphery to our tunnel vision. Any moment can be the pivotal moment when it all becomes apparent.
Life is just a series of moments strung together; stepping stones to get you down your path. The moments carry us through. They strengthen us, they help us grow, and they give us the opportunity to be David to Life’s Goliath.
Dreaming of Fairytales
I never wanted to believe in fairytales because frankly, I’m a realist. But I’m also a liar and a coward. I hate mediocrity, yet I live my life just above it. It hurts so much to hear that I’m not trying hard enough, because I’m usually not. Why? Fear of failure? How could such a fear lead to such detriment?
But now I think it’s OK to believe in fairytales – or to want a fairytale. Other people dream of being rich and famous; that’s their fairytale. Everyone paints their dreamscape with different colors – different architecture. My fairytale is love.
I don’t want to settle for mediocre love. A mediocre job doesn’t define your life; it defines your income. But a mediocre love defines your life. the love you’ve given and the love you’ve taken – that’s the life that flashes before your eyes when you see the light.
You don’t think of your career – you think of the love you’ve shared. You remember kisses and hugs and being held and holding. You remember tears and laughter, holding hands and making love.
You live a life that is witnessed by others as proof that you were here. You can leave behind creations, but I’m sure that at the end of your life, when you look back, you don’t think of your diamonds, your houses, the expensive artwork on the walls. You think back to the lover that kept you warm each night in bed and the five-year old son that hugged you because you were crying and wanted nothing back in return.
I want that kind of love. It’s not that I want to get married to join the institution. But I want that kind of love – that’s my fairytale. No prince on white horse to come along and kiss Sleeping Beauty, awakening an eternal love and sailing into the sunset. I want a love that shares my life. A love that is there for me as my home – the home for my heart. Love that keeps my life beating. Love is the foundation of despite the brick walls or geography.
For someone to think they want to marry someone must mean you look at this person and think there is no way I don’t want this person in my life. I want this person around always – like my family. You can fight with your mother, you father, your sister, but no matter what, it’s your family. You’re physically connected to this universe through your shared biology. I want love like that in my life – someone I know is going to be there for me and love me in that way. Because that’s the only way I know how to love.
I have no interest in floating through life alone having experiences with random people here or there. I want someone to remember OUR life with me. There is nothing wrong with being alone; I enjoy being alone sometimes. But I don’t want to live my life alone, sharing tiny bits with a variety of people. I want to know that there is someone who wants what I want.
I want to share my life with someone who I want to talk to all the time and kiss all the time. Someone who, when I think about him, my heart aches, my mouth smiles, my body warms. I want all encompassing love; the great extreme. I want someone whose wants match my wants. But maybe no one needs that specific ideal kind of love. That’s OK.
But if that’s what I want – if that’s my dream – don’t I owe it to myself to find that kind of love and share it with someone who wants the same thing?
Transcribing these abstract, impulsive emotions onto paper using words seems virtually impossible. How do you articulate such abstraction? It seems so naive, so vulnerable, and yet it makes is so permanent. But how do you otherwise express this sort of instinctual aching? But therein lies the contradiction – instinct is in direct contrast to logic. However, without our instincts we’d be one less dimension.
I want someone to only want me – all the time. I want someone to share their life with me in the same way. You can’t blame a girl for wanting. So what if it’s unrealistic? How could it be a fairytale if it’s realistic?
Pizza with the Works Day
This is why I love America. A country that celebrates pizza is a good thing. For a previous post on pizza (yes there was another pizza post), read this. Happy Pizza!
SpaceBook
SpaceBook is my pet name for the collective breed of social networking sites. Sort of a MySpace marries Facebook and it’s all the same thing, different color. As a genre, SpaceBook is taking a deep stab at the integrity of our human social interactions, redefining the way we communicate and consequentially forcing us to create and abide by new standards in social etiquette.
We interact on SpaceBook much like truck drivers on CB radios – Breaker, Breaker 1-9-ing it for anyone who will Roger that. As a society increasingly dependent on digital communication, we have become habitually conditioned to seek social engagement (and attention) from the very source that’s sucking so much of our lives – our computers. The irony is so blatant – we have surrounded ourselves with technology instead of humanity and then wonder why we’re so desperate for human interaction?
Never before has a society been so into probing into everyone’s lives and personal business. A society saturated with reality-based entertainment, we have become immune to any of life’s mystery and demand immediate gratification in every element of our lives. Information you once reserved for the privileged few is now dispersed through bits and bytes into the world.
The SpaceBook Universe is like a virtual high school reunion whenever you want it, no extreme diet or hot date required. From our desktops we click our way into the hip crowd. We see the cool girls who got fat and the fat girls who got cool. But alas we can never truly shed the high school drama. Decades into the future, we still post pictures yesteryear and reminisce about the days where we passed notes rather than posts on SpaceBook bulletin boards. But kudos for us adults – we have successfully made the progression from fake in person to fake online.
We update our “status” on a regular basis. We affirm our love, support our politicians, and send cryptic messages into the Universe. We toss out the line and wait for the bite. We function as self-driven advertising machines, crafting clever “sticky” status lines that will tempt the masses. Entice them to reply … and possibly engage a real person in a virtual conversation.
SpaceBook provides empowerment for those adults who don’t feel comfortable approaching someone in person and asking them to be their “friend.” In the SpaceBook Universe, it takes very little risk to click a button requesting a friend. We can ask it of anyone – and bestow it to anyone.
For those of us with passive aggressive tendencies, SpaceBook offers up ample opportunity. Take the friend request – the fundamental building block of any well-rounded SpaceBook account. As an amateur, I clumsily thought the standard protocol was to approve all friends, reserving denials only for dire circumstances (i.e., ex-boyfriend) or to make a point (READ: SpaceBook power trip). I was proven wrong.
There are die-hards amongst the SpaceBook populace and they maintain steadfast rules for navigating their Universe with almighty SpaceBook Righteousness. Said rules may include strict quantifiable friend approval criteria (i.e., “I’ve spoken to them in the last year”) or self-imposed limitations on participation in the Universe (i.e., “I only approve friends, I don’t poke or send virtual presents”). Every addict creates rules to keep their addiction at bay.
“Friend,” as a title, has never been so overused and under-meant. The label used to infer integrity; it held a high rank in life’s social order of values. Now the omnipresent designation needs clarification. Is she a real friend or friend on SpaceBook?
SpaceBook also functions as a stage from which we broadcast our blossoming (or wilting) relationships. An interactive forum exists for your friends to observe and comment on your romantic interludes. They witness as you publicly exchange flirtatious comments and subsequently over-run your online photo albums showcasing the new couple on Halloween, on New Year’s Eve, vacationing on the beach. You publicize each time your relationship transitions; progressively clicking your way from “single” to “in a relationship” to “engaged” to “married.” SpaceBook gives you the wedding slideshow as it unfolds in real time. We’ve become a culture constantly categorizing and consistently broadcasting.
A friend of mine, newly married, was angry when her husband reminded her that he wouldn’t be home for dinner; he was attending a work event. She knew of no such event, she proclaimed. He countered with “Didn’t you see it on my FaceBook?” Really? A wife has to hear about a husband’s plans at the same time as his high school girlfriend? Virtual romance + virtual communication can sometimes create a complicated formula.
Even the youngest among us are gaining a mastery of online social networking long before they ever learn how to feel comfortable networking with human beings in a room. They chat with “buddies” on sites like Club Penguin and gain a false sense of social sophistication. Just because you can approach another online penguin with a slapstick joke doesn’t mean it’s OK to do with a teacher. Boundaries are blurred by the computer veil. But the reality is that social networking rules do not equal real life socializing rules.
But as with all human vices, SpaceBook does succeed in bringing you small doses of life’s candy. Like seeing that the captain of the football team become a regular guy and seeing the popular girls become regular mommies. Like posting photos of yourself 35 pounds lighter and much happier. Like waking up to see your boyfriend change his status to “in love” for his whole Universe to see.
When I Travel
When I travel, I am often fulfilling both a lifetime wanderlust and an attempt to understand human interactions. I wander around a new locale, often without a specific destination in mind – driven by merely an inclination, a small or a scenic vista.
When you walk/explore the streets of a city or the back roads of a small town, you can truly experience life there. Traveling in a tourists’ footprint cheats you out of true cultural immersion and short-changes you out of truly savoring every cultural morsel.
Notice the signs, the trees, the newsstands, the coffee shops, the park benches, the bikes, the way the people dress, if they greet strangers on the street.
You often notice the most beautiful freckles on life’s face.
PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN
So we never forget what it means to be an American. Proof that we finally practice what we preach. America, I salute you.
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