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.