E is for Eeyore, and Emily.

Yesterday was my 23rd birthday, and I have to confess, I dislike my birthday; it is as Eeyore says, "the worst day of the year". Beyond being a young child (the days of troll-themed birthday parties, dollar-store gifts, ice-cream cakes and goody-bags to end the day) I have not enjoyed a single birthday. There will be moments during the day that are sweet, but the majority of the moments seem to be spent crying the remainder of the tear quota from the year of life past, or trying really hard not to cry until tears are just pouring down your face and people are looking at you oddly. It is fully the gloomiest day of the year, preceded only once so far in 2005 by the three days of my graduation. I don't know what it is. Maybe the pressure of other peoples expectations; expectations that it will be the best day of the year, expectations that you are super stoked that however many years ago you survived being born, really, it is my mom that should be getting the high fives and cakes and flowers every December 17th, not me.

I find that on my birthday I become overly introspective, and think about how much I didn't do in the past year of my life, and how many opportunities I let slip. It is kind of a day of mourning. Not that I am getting old, I don't mind that so much, but more just about the time that has passed and the fewness of things I have done- and then I feel guilty because, again, everyone else is so excited and expecting you to be so happy as well- and then, people are super disappointed when they find out that you are going home (after working on your birthday) to sit on your couch alone and watch Disney movies. Is it bad that that is what I want to do? My good friend at work cheered me up with a rendition of a gloomy day song that her stuffed Eeyore sings.

Being 23 now, I am ready to grow up and do my birthdays my way. I have a game plan for the years to come, and I am going to not expect every year to be different. It is hard to be a downer on the one day when everyone else around you is being so cheery for your sake, especially when your disposition on the other 364 days of the year generally leans towards extreme happiness.

Having now made all of the above statements let me back it up a little and clarify a few things. I appreciate everyones well wishes and thoughts, and I cherish the opportunity to reconnect with close friends from across the world. Also I love other peoples birthdays and making a big deal of them. Hypocritical? Peut-etre. I just don't like it when it's about me, I become an emotional wreck once a year. God knows I will never survive my own wedding.

This past week was focused on the virtue of purpose, and I had a lot of really insightful and poignant things to say about it, but I guess the purpose of this post changed when I began writing. Pat on the back for me tho because it was a good purposeful week, up until yesterday. This week is self-discipline. Start a new year on the right foot.

living life loyally

So this last week has been super exciting and productive and revealing. Since I last wrote I have been attempting to focus on the virtue of loyalty, I have been to a wedding in Calgary, won grand prize at my work's casino night, got a job in China, mostly sorted out university for the fall, celebrated numerous birthdays, played musical bingo at a seniors home with junior youth, read the most recent NatGeo and made significant advances on Super Mario Bros Wii. What virtue?

Really tho, I definitely notice myself getting back into the mindset of virtues as the last few weeks have progressed; learning to really work with them and use them, that will come later. It all starts in the head right?

Loyalty is interesting. Makes you think of dogs? Yeah me too. Why? Because dogs are loyal. Why? Because they stick to, love, and sometimes protect (depending on their breed and disposition and size), the person that feeds them and takes care of them. Okay, if that is the basis of loyalty I am able to come up with then to be loyal I must stick to, love, and sometimes protect(?), both my parents and God. Because they have fed me and taken care of me collectively. Barring my logic making sense to anyone else my theory is (kind of) backed up in numerous quotes in Sacred Moments such as:

'The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,

his mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.'

Lamentations 3

There is another beautiful quote from the Bible, Proverbs 4, that resonated with me all week:

'More than all else, keep watch over your heart, since here are the wellsprings of life.'

The above quote reminded me of Baha'u'llah saying in Gleanings:

'Out of the whole world He hath chosen for Himself the hearts of men.'

The two quotes seem so intimately linked though they have come from religious teachings thousands of years separate; proof that there is one God with one unfolding religion for mankind? Loyalty seems to be more driven by the heart than by actions or the mind, and so it makes me think about what I really have my heart set on and therefore how that is influencing to what or who I feel most loyal.

If my heart is the well spring of life and I have my heart set on, an individual, an idea, a desire, how dangerous for my own well being could that be. And if my heart is the well spring of life and I allow God to have that one piece of me which He has chosen then what a content and harmonious existence I can begin to live. Deep.

On what will seem like a completely unrelated note to you, I have just recently downloaded Ocean into my computer which I haven't had for years. Ocean is a free software library of religious scripture and literature from around the world that you can download onto your computer. It is really a brilliant tool and has kept me completely occupied and engaged for hours now. I would like to blame that for the scattered nature of this post, I kept getting distracted by Ocean. Better than Nintendo I guess.

Next Thursday I will review my week of purposefulness which begins today.

orderly conduct

Back in November- earlier this week- I was spending an unassuming evening- mostly by the fire stove- at my parents' house in Armstrong. As is not unusual in my character I was complaining. This nights complaint was about my wild and un-styled hair that seems to be becoming more uncooperative as the weather cools and the winter air dries out. My mom, who also suffers from wild hair (perhaps a case even more severe than mine) looked at me without missing a beat and stated with a smile, "Better to have the crazies on the outside of your head than the inside!" Then barely waiting for acknowledgement to her witty retort she turned and went downstairs, leaving me with her profound words of wisdom penetrating deep into my being.

As much as I am light-hearted and jesting about this story, the words really did stick with me all week and they came to be quite useful; like a mantra of sorts. Let me elaborate.

The virtue of this week was order. I have had strong organizational, logical, and systematic tendencies since I was young- I prefer not to use the term obsessive. I have expressed my penchant for order all throughout my life in my constant list-making, my use of daily organizers, the way I arrange my closet, the daily routines I create for myself, the way I show every step of my math homework no matter how easy it is and for how many years I have been doing it, the way I keep things that contain records but throw away everything else others may consider sentimental, clutter is destructive. I think that it is fair to say that I have a natural inclination towards order, and yet nowhere near being a, uh, a... 'master' of order even after almost 23 years of being good at it. Like other things if you don't practice, and reflect, you won't get better at it. So for this week I stayed focused on such things as: using simple methods to create order, subtracting things from my life in order to live soulfully, and enjoying the beauty and order of creation. 

As the week went on I began to notice that despite my outward tendencies towards order my inner being, my mind and my emotions can easily become chaotic and woefully disorganized, but with the help of quotes from Sacred moments and my mother's words of wisdom ringing in my ears, I tried to pay attention to creating order within myself. In moments where my environment was uncontrollably disorderly, instead of giving in I tried to rise above, you know. 

As one small example even when it was too late to clean my messy room, I prayed before I slept. This is hard for me, I like tidy rooms, and I especially like tidy spaces to pray in, but I let the crazies stay on the outside and kept the inside in order. Some nights I am too tired to clean and pray, so I let the prayers take the trump this week and I consistently slept better and felt better. Weird? Probably not.

Speaking of sleeping and praying and cleaning it is late and I am tired and I am flying to Calgary for a wedding in the morning so in honour of being somewhat orderly about my life I should wrap it up and go to sleep, after cleaning, and praying. Also as a somewhat ironic side note, it has taken me four sittings over two days to actually write this blog. That is how organized I am (NOT).

I particularly like the serenity of this quote from Jose Ortega Y Gasset, "Order is not pressure which is imposed on society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within."

This week coming up will focus on the virtue of loyalty.

a kind of kindness

In the past week I have become acutely aware of two of my most extreme character flaws -- well three, if I count my tendency to use excessive amounts of dish soap to wash painfully few dishes; I always do have the cleanest dishes though. One of the flaws is really more of a bad habit, a minor flaw, and only aggravating to myself. The other one, needs seriously, for my peace of mind as well as for the comfort and well being of those who have to interact with me, to be addressed.

So I am going to refocus my mind on the daily virtues in the book by Linda Kavelin Popov 'Sacred Moments', which was previously the back bone of my blogs, as well as a renewing, and hopefully, productive way to live each day. (I have decided that focusing on the bad, will only glorify it and it seems pointless to be keeping who I don't want to be at the front of my mind. We will see how this goes.)

Diving right in, the virtue of this past week has been kindness. I don't know if it is that I am rarely kind, or if I was just having an overly morose and self-centered week, but focusing on being kind was an unexpected challenge. At least if I was not as kind as I should have been in all situations, I noticed and acknowledged how unkind I was. I noticed the kindness in people around me and that made me feel better. For instance, I saw an older man drop his bag of groceries on a busy street and a young guy with headphones in and neon hightops on chased an apple down the pavement and brought it back to the man. I know this is a brief and superficial look into kindness but I am in a limbo between exhaustion and needing to get this written so I can mentally move on to next(this) weeks virtue: order.

Also late last week Florence passed away. The funeral was a suitably peaceful event as she was 97 years old and had passed in her sleep, but it definitely made me stop and pause and re-examine a lot of what I am doing with my life. In my previous post about Florence, I ended by saying that I had her by my side and I knew there was nothing she couldn't teach me. I pray that she is still by my side.

happy happy hippy.

It is interesting how much happens around and to us for no apparent reason. So I would like to take this moment to ponder the unapparent, because nothing happens for no actual reason does it? 

 I wrote the above lines about half an hour ago and have sat here staring at the computer and coming up with a million elusive thoughts on the idea- each of which mean nothing, and lead nowhere, and are simply evanescent musings that I already know will lead to no conclusion or greater understandings. So I pondered like I said I would, I hope you did the same. 

The thought came to my mind because when I got home tonight I was so happy. Like almost painfully happy. Embarrassing happy, where you can't stop smiling and just want to laugh out loud. (On a side note, laughing is so weird. It is an odd stuttering staccato noise that we make in our throats to express joy... it is weird when you think about it.) It could have been all of the caffeine-heavy black tea and sugar I consumed in the last two hours, but I think it was also joy. And it was for no apparent reason. And I really mean that. There are many reasons that I can think of to be happy about life, but there was no visible reason for me to be so happy at that moment (except the caffeine). Life in general is just good, and full of goodness at the moment. 

The junior youth girls are a large part of that goodness. I am so in awe. Last Thursday we got together and did a quick tour and meet and greet at Heritage Square, which is a seniors residence here in town where we are going to volunteer. The girls were so polite and comfortable and excited to be there. I got the chance to meet the moms tonight. I have known some of them for years and gotten to know a couple more over the last few weeks, but as of tonight I have met them all. And they are all great, and supportive, and awesome, and wonderful. 

Friends are another part of the goodness. Friends that I have known since I didn't know myself, friends who have gone through the good and the bad, friends who I wont see for another ten years, friends who I haven't seen in five years, friends who I can call after a nightmare at 3am and will talk to me until I fall asleep again, friends who make me laugh, and friends who send you an email just when you need it. (So I started this whole friends paragraph not really knowing what I was writing and then I just realized that the song that had started playing on my iTunes DJ was See My Friends by the Kinks - this is why I shouldn't write with music on.) 


The possibilities of the future contribute to my goodness.


The Starbucks girl that brought free samples into my work today huuugely contributed to my goodness. 


The following week will be a good one. 


I think the caffeine is worn off, because now I just feel regular happy.

back in the game?

I feel like recently I have been doing so many things, and I write so much in my mind, but I have stopped taking the time to sit and actually put my mental blogs into type. Despite everything that I have been doing, I can not even claim that I have not had the time, I guess I have just not had the 'oomph'; then it gets to the point where I have so many things that I want to write about, and I don't know where to start, so it feels safer just not to write. Despite being such a spontaneous and capricious individual I have a few obsessive organizational tendencies that can be somewhat of a hindrance to just getting things done...

I want to write more frequently, not for you, the readers', sake, but rather for my own. I think better when I write. 

Something that has been such an inspiration in my life recently is the junior youth group I have recently started 'animating'. On average there are six junior youth (aka juyu) who attend, and they are from an assortment of backgrounds and families, but they are all girls and they range from sixth to eighth grade. We get together once a week after school and are slowly working our way through a work book called 'Breezes of Confirmation' while doing yoga, arts, service projects, and of course having deep and meaningful conversations. Every week the girls leave me with so many things to think about and reflect upon in my own self, as well of course as society as a whole. 

In last weeks lesson the final activity was to write a paragraph about what you wanted to be when you grew up and why. The girls were fandastik! We had a human rights lawyer, astronaut, astronomer, teacher, singers, and actresses. And then there was me. It struck me that it was so simple for these girls to write down their dreams and future careers and be so sure about them, while I sat with my work book in front of me thoroughly stumped and puzzled and chewing on the back of my pencil. What happens between being eleven and twenty-two. How do you become so much less sure of everything in your life the older you get? Does this happen to everyone or is it just me? 

I am dead certain about many things that I want to do; I want to travel, I want to be of service to humanity, and I want to raise a family. So do I just pick a career that I am not passion about but would be good at just to do something? So much emphasis is put on loving what you do and therefore having a happy life, but I think I could love anything I do, so that does not narrow it down. I can be passionate and happy doing whatever needs to be done, so how do I make a choice?

So basically what I am trying to say is I don't know. I know that I am flying out of the country on January fourth, and I think that I will apply to some universities before I leave so that I can always come back to one in the fall. Or not. 

Also, back to the juyu girls... Every single one of them is great. They are so full of idea's and energy and really bright girls who look forward to getting together every week and spending time with each other. Many times when we are done everything we have planned for the afternoon we will all just sit downstairs together and talk and talk and talk and talk. As bright and caring as each of them is, I have noticed a tendency towards 'white lies' come up almost every week in one form or another. They are really not harmful things at all, and by 'white lies' I mean spotless white, white to the extent that they will openly talk about it to me or even the parents because that is how 'acceptable' these lies are. Maybe it is not a big deal and I should just let it pass, but it feels like something that should be addressed. Perhaps I am just too hard lined and don't really accept any bending of the truth at all, but I don't really know. I don't want to make the girls feel bad either, because they are not meaning any harm, and I don't think that anyone in their lives has ever broached this behavior as unacceptable, so I don't want to dwell on it or point any of them out specifically... What do I do?

It is now very late and I have not really written anything very interesting or cohesive, but bear with me if you like and maybe it will get better! 

Does anyone want to take the world and act on it? Lao-tzu

While I was baking some scrumptious boysenberry-whitechocolate-spelt scones this morning I had three things on my mind:

1. I need an apron.

2. How will I get my regular sized baking sheet to fit into my apartment sized oven.

3. September 11.

Accepting my seven-year old navy Maxwell sweatpants, with holes in at least three places, as an acceptable place to wipe my flour covered hands and finding a muffin tin that fits in the oven just fine, and not being picky about the shape of my scones, I moved the trivial items aside in my mind and have spent a lot of time contemplating the date today.

Eight-years and five hours ago I was a blonde, lipsmackers wearing, ninth-grader about two weeks into living at my new home; an international boarding school. My new best friend, a fellow blonde, lipsmackers wearer, was, along with probably one third of the school's population that year, American. I had never heard of the World Trade centers, and genuinely thought that The Pentagon was something from the movies. That morning was probably no more unique for myself than most other fourteen-year-old-Canadian girls, with one exception, having just moved into an international home on Vancouver Island, there was not a moment of finger pointing, or hatred, or judgements towards anyone middle-eastern or muslim. The year proceeded, as it always will, winter break came by and there were indeed airplanes flying and airports open so most kids could get home to see their families and in Social Studies we memorized maps of all the continents and the capitals of every African, European, South-American, and Middle-Eastern country.

Over the years nine/eleven has come to mean something different for everyone, but something I hope that the american-nationalist, the blonde-canadian, the african-american, the muslim-american, the iraqi mother-of-four, the conspiracy-theorist, and the skeptic can all agree on is that it was a tragedy. I have the utmost respect and gratitude and admiration for those who were first responders on that day, and those who lost family or friends, so this is in no way an attempt to deflect the much deserved gratitude towards those heroes, however, the tragedy that occurred on this day and the way it derailed the lives of so many here in North-America is but a small insight into the fear and confusion and uncertainty that so much of the world lives in on a daily basis.

Did you know that the coffee that we drink today comes, originally, from Ethiopia. Did you know that according to equatorcoffee.ca more than half of Canada's citizens consume one to four coffee beverages a day. In 1994, in the United States, there were approximately $7.5 billion dollars in coffee sales. Did you know that according to the UN Human Development Index of 2006 Ethiopia ranked 170 out 177 poorest countries in the world. The average Ethiopian lives on less than one dollar a day.

Did you know that despite the fact that according to UNICEF 26% of children in Niger will die before they turn five years old, it is considered a 'safe' african country because of its 'fledgling democracy' and relative political stability.

Did you know that Venezuela has more murders per year than any other country in the world. According to dailymail.co.uk there were 130 murders for every 100,000 residents. South Africa is next on the list with 62 murders for the same number of residents. That is less than half as many.

I am reading a great book right now called 'The Chinese Religion and the Baha'i Faith' and in it there is a quote by Baha'u'llah which says, 'Be ye the fingers of one hand, the members of one body.' The author of this book elaborates saying,

'It is obvious that there is a great diversity of form and function in a body as reflected in its various parts- hands, legs, ears, the backbone, and so on. Although one treasures one's sensory organs such as eyes and ears much more than one's legs and hands, yet all receive the full support of the body. If one of our toes is bruised accidentally while walking, the whole body feels the pain and may be immobilized for a while because all the organs and sensory perceptions rush to the aid of the toe. Similarly, if one applied this attitude to the people in the world, we would no longer live in a world where people ignore the sufferings of others but rather rush to one another's aid whenever one part of humankind was ailing.'

I guess that all I am hoping is that while we are thankful for those who gave their lives to save lives and we remember those who lost their lives in New York on September 11, 2001, we also begin to notice some of the pain that the rest of humanity lives with on a daily basis. Whether it is just by becoming more aware yourself, saying a prayer, taking a moment to meditate, or become involved with a charity... begin to notice the rest of our human family.