“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

-C.S. Lewis

non semper erit aestas

When the going gets tough, this chick apparently cries. For the life of me I can’t figure out why when something entirely shitty happens I miss the chance to expand and instead expend tears upon (sometimes) cleverly worded (mostly elementary) insults. For example, the tow company removes my car from a parking space (devoid of any red stripe or visible No Parking sign) and proceeds to charge $400 for the 45 minute luxurious stay in their creepy and excessively isolated parking lot and how do I react? Well, by sobbing while very loudly labeling the two young men working that Sunday 3am shift as the legalized mafia, of course. In my defense I did at one point apologize to the gentlemen for my rudeness, however structured the apology’s scope to include only those insults that may have been incorrectly perceived as racism due to the two employee’s coincidental Russian (?) accents. By the way, this apology preceded a quick educational lesson on what karma is. Good grief, even I want to punch myself in the face.

I knew when I moved from Texas to California to live without friends or family that I’d be forced to face certain harsh realities of life. That was kind of the entire point of the move, actually: to learn what I knew not before and to grow from it. But I was expecting life lessons on running a household and money, not lessons about myself. I was not expecting to learn that deep down, I’m apparently a spoiled 14 year old girl who throws full out tantrums when denied her way. That’s a reality I don’t exactly know how to handle. Washing my mouth out with soap seems silly when the desired end result is lasting change. I expect all I can do is pray I react graciously the next time I’m faced with any entirely shitty situation and perhaps in the meantime send the tow company in downtown San Diego a basket of muffins. All Russians like muffins, right?

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

-Marianne Williamson

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

~Albert Einstein

"That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my
enemy–all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea, the very fiend himself–that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved–what
then?”

~Carl Jung