Time

 Time is a strange thing. Time is relative. Time is absolute. Time is aplenty. Time is scarce. Time is short. Time is forever. Time is weird.

Think about it. Time just goes on and on and on. Each and every day, there's time. There always has been time, for as long as anyone can remember. But there was a time when there was no time. Or does that even make sense? There will be a time when there is no time. Or will there?

Time is relative. On the East coast it's seven o'clock. On the West coast, it's four o'clock. In Australia, it's tomorrow.

When you're sitting in an airplane for hours, like I am right now, time goes by very slowly. When you're out with your friends having a great time, time flies.

A week for a five year old is a really long time. A week for an adult is a very short time indeed.

Time is absolute. Ten minutes from now, it will be ten minutes later than it is right now. No matter where you are in the world, that is true.
Being in time-out for five minutes is torture whether you're five years old or fifteen.

Watching a pot boil always takes forever, because it's such a boring activity.

Going on a roller coaster is always too short, and leaves you wanting more time.

Time is precious. We only have a certain amount of it in our lifetime. We have less and less time every moment of every day. Our time can run out at any moment. We can lose a moment so easily, and never get it back. If we don't value the time we have, we'll never appreciate life properly.

Time is annoying. There are only sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, twenty-four hours in a day, seven days a week, and fifty-two weeks in a year. We never have enough time to do everything we want to do. If time were limitless, we'd get everything done, right?

Wrong. We have just the right amount of time to do everything we should do. If we learned to organize it better, not waste any, divide it proportionally, and use it well, there would be the perfect amount of time.

But, we're only human, and we mess up. A lot. And that's okay. We have time to learn from our mistakes. We have time to stop and think about life. We have time to work things out and make things better. We have time to learn how to use time.

Change

Change can be really annoying. At one moment you think the world is perfect, the next, everything changes.

Change can happen suddenly, where you're on the edge of a cliff one moment and the next you're dead, becuase your cat decided to scare you at that moment, which is a sudden change from her normal, purring, happy attitude.
Or, change can be gradual. Your cat has been growing more and more menacing toward you because you keep forgetting to take the bones out of her favorite salmon dish. You should have know better than to take her to the edge of a cliff with you, but you didn't see the change because it was so gradual, and the next thing you know, you're dead.

Okay, let's use a less drastic example. Friendships. Two girls can be friends for eighteen years, and then get into a fight one day (probably over a boy) and never talk again. Or, they can slowly grow apart, until they're thirty and think, "I wonder what happened to that girl that I used to hang out with when I was younger. She was so nice."

Change can happen in any area of life. It can be in friendships, as mentioned, in workplaces, social status, location, temperature, color, body weight, hair style, candy choices, and fashion preferences. Change can happen when we least expect it. Change can happen the moment we decide for it to happen.

Change can be for better or for worse. Take a change in social circles, for example. You will move away from some old friends, but meet new friends at the same time. Losing the old friends is an example of bad change, if those friends really meant something to you. Making new friends is a good change, especially if you can form wholesome relationships with them.

Change must be taken in stride, from one day to the next. Change cannot be helped, no matter how hard we try to stop it. Change will make us stronger, even if it hurts us in the process. Let us embrace it, and use it for good.

Fear

The title of this post probably makes you afraid to read it. Don't worry, I'm not trying to instill fear, just understand it a little more deeply.

Fear comes at any given moment. You can be afraid of anything, anyone, or anywhere for no apparent reason. There are people in this world so deathly afraid of getting peanut butter stuck to the roof of their mouths, there's a name for that fear; "Arachibutyrophobia."
Fear is like a monster, lurking around any corner. Fear is the thought that there could be monster around the next corner. Fear is a scary thing.

Sometimes fear itself can be your fear. You can be so afraid of that moment when something startles you, your heart will jump, and your breath will catch. You can be afraid of being paralyzed by that fright and not being able to act. You can be afraid, not of the monster around the corner, but by the fear that monster causes.

Everyone's afraid of something. Some are afraid of spiders, others of snakes, some of aliens, and some of peanut butter getting stuck to the roof of their mouths. But, Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Meaning, there's no reason to be afraid of spiders, snakes, aliens, and peanut butter. There is a reason to fear that moment of paralyzing fear, because you never know when it's going to come and how you will handle it.

Normal Doesn't Exist

Okay, the title of this post is a lie, but it sounded cool. There is a certain amount of normality in life, otherwise there would be no such thing as "freaks", "weirdos", or "strange" people. At the same time, though, not everyone is a cookie-cutter clone of another. (I should note here that cookie cutters do not make every cookie the same, there's always something that goes weird, but that's beside the point.)

Normal isn't what we think it is. Normal isn't having the perfect job, the perfect boyfriend, the perfect house, and the perfect group of friends. Normal isn't being invisible and doing what everyone else does. Normal isn't thinking the way society tells you, and normal isn't about how others perceive you at all.

But there are things that are normal for everyone. It's perfectly normal to feel sad when someone hurts you. It's normal to be happy when someone loves you. It's normal to fall head over heels for the person you love. It's normal to laugh, cry, hurt, love, feel, and think on a daily basis.
It's also normal to do things society tells you are "strange". It's normal not to feel sad at a funeral, believe it or not. It's normal to want to be different. It's normal to feel the urge to scream in public when you're upset. It's normal to come up with crazy plans that will never work just to get the thing or person you want. It's normal to be unique and different.

Some things our culture tells us are normal really aren't, though. Girls getting pregnant at a young age without a husband is not normal, it's a scandal every time it happens. Teenagers yelling at their parents when they're upset is not normal, it's usually discouraged. Finding the perfect man, falling in love, and living happily ever after is not normal. It's a fairy tale.
I'm not telling you this to discourage you. I'm saying that life isn't always the way TV and movies tell us it is. Life is usually a lot more "normal" than they make it out to be. And that's okay, because the way we, as humans, "normally" behave is very interesting to watch.

If you want to know what "normal human beings" are like, visit www.mylifeisaverage.com. It's a website full of stories about average people doing average things. You'll be surprised at how "strange" everyone is.

Heart vs. Mind

Do you ever feel like your heart is pulling you in one direction and your mind in another? Yeah, me too. All the time. I'll feel like doing one thing, while knowing I should do be doing something else. My heart is pulling at me with all it's might, but my logical mind won't let me go that way for some reason or another.
The problem with our feelings is that they're not always right. The problem with our reasoning is that we can reason ourselves into anything.

As a normal human being, my feelings are up and down, left and right, North, East, West, and South. They make me want to laugh, cry, yell, and hide all at the same time. I never know what they're gonna do next, and when something emotional happens, I can't deal with it. My heart tells me all these things, and I don't always know what they mean or what to do with the information.

When it comes to reasoning things out, I'm not much better. If I think long enough about anything, I can make it seem okay in my mind. I can convince myself that watching TV for hours is good for me, because I need a break from life. I can get myself to believe that spending $20 on a new shirt is worth it because I don't really need to buy groceries this week. I even convinced myself once that banging my head against the wall would make my hair grow faster because hair was simply dead cells and you killed thousands of cells every time you hit your head.

So, what do you do when your mind and heart are at complete odds with each other? What do you do when you feel like sitting around and watching TV all day, but you know you should be working on something important? Or, how do you cope with a situation where your heart is telling you that you really like a person, but your mind tells you he or she is completely wrong for you? And who's to say that "knowing" the person is wrong for you isn't just another feeling, that of fear or selfishness?

There's another aspect that a lot of people seem to forget about. I know I do sometimes. The last aspect is called, "the will". The will is what makes us do anything. The will unites the heart and mind and turns them into action. When we've got feelings, or thoughts, we often have to choose to act on them or not. Usually, we act on feelings. Sometimes it's just because we get caught up in the moment, or because our feelings are clouding our judgment.

Our will shows us what we really are. My actions show who I am inside. If I feel like hitting my head on the wall in frustration and my mind is telling me that it'll help my hair grow, but I decide not to, then my actions are showing that I'm not insane and people will be less inclined to call me so.
If I really like a guy, but my mind is telling me to go slow, and I decide to go with the flow of my feelings instead of rational thoughts, things could go very badly. I could get myself into a very emotionally driven relationship that will probably end in heartbreak and depression. This action will show me to be a very fickle person when it comes to relationships, and people will be less likely to trust me in the future.

So, basically, I don't have all the answers. I never claimed to. But I know what it's like to have two parts of myself fighting, and only being able to chose one course of action. I know to slow down and think what the consequences of my actions could be. I know that people care less about how I think and feel than they do about how I act on those thoughts and feelings.
Perhaps, one day, my mind, heart, and will be in one accord. Probably not. From what I know about life, I probably just have to deal with it.

We Make Plans

Everyone makes plans. Plans for life, plans for the year, plans for the next day, plans for the next hour. We all have plans. Even now.
In about fifteen minutes I plan on picking my mom up from work. Tomorrow, I plan on seeing my older sister. Next week I plan on flying back to college. This year I plan on getting good grades in school. In two years from now I plan on graduating and getting a job. Several more years after that, I plan on marrying and having kids. I have plans for my life. Everyone does.

And there's nothing wrong with having plans. Plans are good, they give us a goal, a place to go in life. The problem comes when things don't go according to plan. Which happens every day.
This morning, I planned on sleeping in until ten, because it's Summer vacation, and I usually have to wake up really early on Monday mornings. Of course, I told my mom, my sister, and my friends, "I'm going to sleep until ten on a Monday morning!" And, of course, I didn't.
At 8:36 AM, a horde of little siblings came charging through the halls outside my bedroom, screaming and shouting. But they didn't just run by once, they ran by several times, and then stopped outside my door, still screaming.
And that was the end of that. My plans for the morning were ruined. There was no way I was going to sleep anymore. My plan had failed.

Why do plans fail? Why can't things just always happen exactly how we want them to? Why is it that every time we try to do anything, we always end up disappointed? There are probably several reasons for this. Maybe there are millions, I don't know. Let me list some of my most common plan-eaters.

Number One: the plan wasn't very good in the first place. Maybe you were planning on driving off a cliff hoping the car would fly you to the other side safely. Bad plan. Maybe you were thinking about making a watermelon and cantaloupe smoothie. Depending on how you went about this, that could be a very bad plan. Trust me, I've tried.

Number Two: the plan was not planned out. Maybe you were going to drive off that cliff believing you had wings attached to your car, but had forgotten that you'd taken the wings off that morning to get them cleaned. Normally, in this case, driving off a cliff and hoping to fly would be perfectly alright, but you didn't plan the plan well enough to keep the wings on that day. Or maybe you were actually going to make a strawberry-banana smoothie, but all you had were watermelon and cantaloupe. It's your lack of planning that made your plan turn into a big, watery mess.

Number Three: Something unexpected happens. This is the one that we want to blame all our problems on. "It wasn't my fault!" or "How was I supposed to know?" are just excuses for our own shortcomings. At least, they are most of the time. There are times, however, where you have the wings on your car, you drive off the cliff, you're flying along, and suddenly an eagle comes out and attacks your wings and makes you fall to your death. Or, you've found a way to make a watermelon and cantaloupe smoothie without making a huge, watery mess and suddenly, your blender breaks.

So, basically, our plans fail. Repeatedly. Sometimes we can do something about it, sometimes we can't. We can make good plans, plan them carefully, and account for a million different possibilities. But, still, things can go terribly awry, and that's okay.

Without our plans going wrong, life would be terribly boring. If everything happened exactly how we wanted it to, the future would hold no value. If we got to do everything in life exactly how we want and when we want, we would be extremely boring people. Thank goodness life takes our plans and turns them upside down. Our lives stay interesting because they're unpredictable.

Life is Crazy

Yes. Life is crazy. Not sometimes, but all the time.
Think about it. How many things in our daily lives don't make sense? How many times do we do things that don't need to be done? How often do we stop and think, "that was ridiculous."?
Women brush their hair. Hair is just dead cells protruding from the skull. Yet, women take great care of it and spend hours on it each day to make it look just right.
Each night, we pass out for 6-10 hours and stay completely unconscious. If we aren't unconscious the whole time, we become irritable and upset. And yet, the moment someone loses consciousness during daytime, they're rushed immediately to the hospital.
We spend so much time and energy, practically our entire lives, trying to be successful, only to lose it all when we die.

And these are just things that all humans do. Then there are things that we do ourselves that we find ridiculous. Today, I saw my dad for the first time after months away at college, and now I'm sitting in my bedroom typing blog posts instead of spending time with him. It seems dumb.
You're making breakfast in the morning, and instead of putting your bread in the toaster, you stick it in the blender. Five minutes later, you're running out the door, and you can't find your toast. That's when you realize your idiotic mistake.
I spend months planning and getting ready for something, like a party, or a presentation, or a road trip, only to find myself too exhausted when the day actually comes to properly enjoy or host what it is I'm supposed to be doing.

Life is crazy. Life is weird. Life is one big jumbled mess. This blog is simply my way of explaining that to the world. Once you realize life is crazy, you can deal with it and move on. If you're already at that point, you can laugh at it. If you're not, read on.