I really fucked that up...Thank God.

Today I learned, today I grew, today was a culmination of small occurrences that converged and formed into a small step forward in my quest for knowledge, peace and guidance.  I Started my day with the words from a dear friend, “ It only takes one good thing in your life to bring you happiness, don’t let it go if you got it. “.

At this point in my life where I am unsure of my future that lies any further than two weeks ahead of  me I  have come to appreciate the present. I have learned to let go of yesterday and not attempt to control tomorrow. I have learned to live and be happy with today, now and here. I had become so accustomed in putting forth all my energy on trying to control the uncontrollable I lost control of everything I had immediate pull over. I have lost a lot of my goals in a half a year that I thought I needed and stumbled upon some that I never intended to seek out. I have learned to embrace who I am and not who I thought I was. This was a hard thing to come to terms with. Ill share with you a small piece of life I have began to unearth, we are who we are for a reason, its easy to be ourselves when on our own and in our thoughts. It’s another obstacle to be ourselves in a room full of people and stand up to the mic to let the world know what your so sure of in the confides of yourself. My life in my mind is a beautiful disaster, in the recent past I have found happiness and regained passions but only because I lost and failed first. I have been through heart aches and spun in a tight downward spiral, plummeting only to realize that I had been on a wrong course and that someone somewhere just hit my E-brake and shoved me back in the right place. You cry tears so that they may hit the ground and give life to a withering piece of your life. Every failure you have is a benefit to your future. We don’t fail so that we can be defeated we fail so that we can succeed. Its simple, failure is gift that we have to learn to love. My failures do not define me, my recoveries from those failures make me who I am.

CHE / Peter Pan

Remember the time -- It's now

Like Michael Jackson said "Remember the Time --" It's now.

Here's a little perspective for you. Hopefully it's enough to get your day started:

Seize the Day

by Derek Lin

Here's a puzzle for you: What do you see in this grid above? What do you think it represents?

Okay, it's not a difficult puzzle. The answer is "one year." The columns represent days and the rows are the twelve months of the year, so each day of the year occupies one square.

"Okay," you ask, "so what's the big deal?"

When I look at this grid I get a chill because I'm used to thinking about one year as a long time. Chances are, you do too. But when a year is represented like this, and you can see every day of the year at a glance, suddenly a year doesn't seem so long anymore.

This grid is the layout of a typical table blotter calendar that you can find in any office supply store. It's quite an ordinary, everyday thing. Why should it be any different from a regular yearly calendar that shows the same thing month by month? I'm not sure. Perhaps it is because we've also been conditioned to think of a month as a long time. Perhaps the irregular number of days in a month and the space between months all contribute to that illusion.

In any event, confronting the grid and contemplating its meaning is a sobering experience for me. You cross out a square with each day passes, and no power in Heaven or Earth can bring that day back for you. Once it's gone, it's gone forever. And when another year has passed, all the squares will be crossed out, irrevocably lost. You move on to another grid.

How many more grids do you have? For me, perhaps forty more, if I am lucky. And what is the number forty? It can be expressed as a five-by-eight matrix. The number of table blotters I have left fill the matrix, representing my life. With the passing of each year, one square from this tiny matrix disappears, never to exist again.

If I am lucky. If not, then my matrix - yours too - contains considerably less squares. For all I know I may have just a few more table blotters remaining. The same is true for you.

When you see it this way, you come to the inescapable conclusion that, indeed, life is too short. We hear this platitude so frequently, it has all but lost its power. But now, seen from a fresh angle, the message regains its dark potency. We, all of us, really don't have that much time in this plane of existence. If life is a lesson, it's a crash course.

Are You Living?

A common trait in today's society is to just work hard to reach the next echelon in life, whether it be getting into the school you want, finding a job in this depressed economy, or just trying not to drown in financial instability. Too much pressure is placed on these fabricated benchmarks in one's life, replacing the joy of just doing things for self-fulfillment.

A pretty wise, fictitious high-schooler once said “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” How many times in our lives do we find ourselves just going through the motions and living the day out like there are many more to come? What ever happened to living each day as if it were your last? I see too many individuals caught up on all the numbers in life, too worried about the complexities and social norms imposed by society. This detrimental effect has created the bubbles we all live in today.

From time to time, I find myself just reaching out for that next benchmark in my life, disregarding the people, places, and experiences I have had. I ask you all to learn from my mistakes and not live in the same dull, numb manner. At each stage in your life, there is something to be learned and absorbed to create the individual that is YOU. YOU are the most important factor in YOUR life, and by downplaying what makes YOU original and makes YOU special to this world, we have a society full of the exact same individual.

So I challenge the reader's of this blog to go out there and live YOUR life. In a world of competition, too much emphasis is placed on what others are doing. It is important to remember that no one else is living YOUR life, and the more you focus on others, the less of YOUR life is actually being lived.

3some

The man in the glass

When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day,
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.

For it isn’t your father or mother or wife
Whose judgment upon you must pass.
The fellow whose verdict counts most in you life
Is the one staring back from the glass.

You may be like Jack Horner and chisel a plum
And think you’re a wonderful guy.
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.

He’s the fellow to please-never mind all the rest,
For he’s with you clear to the end.
And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the man in the glass is your friend.

You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years
And get pats on the back as you pass.
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
If you’ve cheated the man in the glass.

Anonymous

Never truly satisfied

"We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."

For a little while I thought I knew everything, now I realize I know nothing, and while I know nothing, I don't think anyone else knows much either.

The more I learn, the less I know.

We do know some things however. We know who we are because of our choices, we know where we want to go because of our hopes and goals, but do we know where we are now? Or are we just mindlessly stuck in this routine, like a B-rated movie, where we already know the ending.

Step 1 of Self-Actualization: Experience things fully, vividly, selflessly.

Throw yourself into the experience of something, let it take you fully. At the very least you learn. Learn how you feel about it, or learn more about how it makes you feel. There is no substitute for experience.

To those who are waiting for something, life has no obligation to make things happen for you, you have to go out there and take it. Stop looking at things in such a grand scale, foundations are made one brick at a time. When you can believe that, you can feel opportunity hanging on to the second hand of your watch, bellowing you to move.

They say the world steps aside for men who know where they are going.

It starts when you start. Today is Day 1.

I'm a gonna show the way.

Dear America,

Ahhh the purgatory of life. College. So often I feel as if I'm in The Phantom Tollbooth's Doldrums. Are you thinking? Stop. Laughing? You wouldn't dare. Sitting, waiting, and stagnating. Formal education shouldn't feel like such a hindrance to one's true education and pursuit of life goals. I try so desperately to enjoy the journey. Enjoying the hike as much as reaching the summit. This concept, so easily conceived, is much harder to implement in my life. My aim in this blog is not at all to turn readers into cheap therapy for myself. I don't want you to become sounding boards. I'm just attempting to provoke thought. Shouldn't society be more tailored to fit all of its diverse members? The ease with which performing well comes in a top public university is astounding. Let me set up an independent study curriculum for myself and then give me a degree.

I digress, I guess I'm tired of ignorance setting the precedent. Which leads me to the following conclusion:

Please, Let us stop fooling ourselves America. Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Also, forty-four percent of US adults still believe the earth is less than 20,000 years old. I'm not making these figures up, it is in the 2008 Gallup poll. The only way for us to achieve our educational goals is through independent study. Make the world your classroom and for the love of god, do not give in to ignorance. Knowledge IS power.

Until next time,
Soccer Tease

none of us are everything, but we are all something

We can sit here all day thinking about which side of the spectrum your quarrels fall into but in reality there is no definite answer to anything.

The only thing we are sure of completely is that we are experiencing something.

Our instincts and emotions are the realest thing we have in this world, and without them we are nothing.

Life is quick, too quick; and the older we get, the faster it goes. It's our very own tragedy, and it's beautiful.

It's too hard to remember everything we have seen. The only thing we can do is to remember how things made us feel.

So remember to feel real.

Let me ask you something powerful, and please try to answer yourself honestly....can you name 10 of the best moments of your life?

1. The day my brother was born

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

And so it goes...

Remember, "Life happens while you're busy making other plans."

-John Lennon

I'm Alive!

How hard is it to know where you are going in a world with no directional references? When not being cliche becomes the cliche. When an attempt at ingenuity is forced to suffice one's need to be different instead of naturally occurring as it should. Enough aimless rambling... I think what I'm getting at is, it is hard to flow with the current of the world. So often I find myself swimming in the opposite direction and nearly drowning most of the time.

So how does one suppress this urge to swim against the current. Well, in a completely cliche, one-word answer -- Hope. Capitalized. I never knew what the word meant. No Merriam-Webster definition can satisfy the meaning of "Hope" that I have come to learn. It means putting all of your worries about the future aside because you believe good will befall you. Hence, room is left for preparation. I became engulfed in escaping mediocrity through any means possible. Avoiding the cliche. Hope means that one day you will escape mediocrity yourself.

An extremely insightful individual once said, "A man can go without wealth, and even without purpose, for a while. But he will not go on without hope".

Coming from the "trophy kid" generation where everyone in the developed world can be whatever they want to be, mediocrity seems like a joke. Then, somewhere reality sets in and you realize that you must actually find a niche, grow up, and ditch the fairy tale. Use hope to prepare and be all that you can be.

Excuse the cliche.

Here's to you

Everyday I pass by a countless number of strangers. I wish I had all the time in world to get to know each one of them, and I wish I had a heart big enough to care.

I have so much to tell you, I don't quite know where to begin. In a world full of billions of different minds and ideals, I am quite sure that all the answers we seek can be found in each other. A lot of the questions we beckon have already been asked and answered by either those around us, or the immortals that lie on our bookshelves. In a world full of people trying to make sure they say everything they need to say we often forget to listen to those who needs us most.

This is one of my favorite quotes of all time, and it certainly highlights the allegory I present to you today.

"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
-John Donne

All the people I have yet to meet and the capacity as to which they could affect my life sets my mind on fire.

There is so much more to us than what we are on paper & often we need to reach out and touch others because we don't know who can touch us back.

This is for those who are not satisfied, This is for those who can see the potential the day offers, the greatness that hangs on to every second of every minute of every day. This is to those who listen because they have more questions than answers.

This one is for you.

If we can't have hope in each other, than how can we have hope in ourselves?

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