I wrote this in my online journal when I was 15 (a sophomore in high school). I was somewhat contemplative and maybe even a little bit insightful.
"Life isn't measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away. The problem is, we expect huge, miraculous, sparkly, perfect things to take our breath away, and often times that just doesn't happen. The alternative is opening our eyes to the small, simple, wonderful things that happen every day. Allowing the little things to make us happy ultimately benefits us in the long run, because we learn to stop expecting so much and taking things in stride. Then, when the huge, miraculous, sparkly, perfect things do happen, they're that much more amazing. Seeing things in a positive light, and smiling at the small stuff, it's all a choice. Happiness is a choice. Even when things are tough, we can smile because inevitably something good will follow. We just gotta watch for it. There is beauty in everything around us, but sometimes we're so wrapped up in the yuckish, we don't notice it."
Aside from strange adjectives and the obvious cliche, I don't think I've dropped this attitude.
Regardless of whatever life throws at us, there is always something good.
I have to believe that.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Veinticuatro
The first two years I lived in Tucson, I alternated between being a pedestrian and a driver. Never was I a bicyclist. (Well, there was that one time I borrowed Roommate's bike to go look for a synagogue, but that's a whole different story.) As a pedestrian/driver, I found bicyclists to be rather annoying. Who did they think they were, not following the traffic laws every other vehicle has to follow? Talk about arrogant!
I definitely still think there are a lot of bicyclists who don't actually realize that what they are riding is considered a "vehicle" in our glorious state, so yes they should stop at stop signs and no they don't automatically have the right of way, but my current frustration is with pedestrians:
GET OUT OF THE BICYCLE LANE. Seriously: on campus especially, you have ten feet on either side of our six-foot, two-way path (which means, you math geniuses, that the pedestrians have 20 feet total to work with and I have three feet to myself), and you choose to walk right down the middle? Right on the double yellow lines? I know you think you aren't endangering anyone, but when you start to swerve because you're talking on your cell phone, I can't anticipate that. And if I follow suit and swerve as well, I am putting people's lives at risk who aren't even in the bike lane. And I am bigger and faster than you. And physics tells me this could lead to some problems.
In lieu of this problem, I have written a haiku:
Oh pedestrians
Please get out of the bike lane
Before I hit you
I definitely still think there are a lot of bicyclists who don't actually realize that what they are riding is considered a "vehicle" in our glorious state, so yes they should stop at stop signs and no they don't automatically have the right of way, but my current frustration is with pedestrians:
GET OUT OF THE BICYCLE LANE. Seriously: on campus especially, you have ten feet on either side of our six-foot, two-way path (which means, you math geniuses, that the pedestrians have 20 feet total to work with and I have three feet to myself), and you choose to walk right down the middle? Right on the double yellow lines? I know you think you aren't endangering anyone, but when you start to swerve because you're talking on your cell phone, I can't anticipate that. And if I follow suit and swerve as well, I am putting people's lives at risk who aren't even in the bike lane. And I am bigger and faster than you. And physics tells me this could lead to some problems.
In lieu of this problem, I have written a haiku:
Oh pedestrians
Please get out of the bike lane
Before I hit you
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