You are not alone.

 “Many people need desperately to receive this message:'You are not alone.'” 
- Kurt Vonnegut

Ever since the second you opened your tiny, most likely brown, eyes, someone has been there to care for you. Someone has been there to help you along. And if not I sincerely apologize and hope the best for your future offspring. But through the coo’s and the spit up, someone somewhere deep in the depths of your begginings has cared about you.
    Why is it though, that when we begin to ponder about life itself and why we are the way we are, thoughts begin brewing in the pit of our brains that maybe, just maybe, we are alone in this world. That maybe, there isn’t a single soul on this planet that could give a shit if a sinkhole replaced the land where our house once stood and we were thrown into the depths of the earth, never to be heard from again. When we were young, if we even thought we were lost in the mall or the supermarket, we began to cry and shiver as if we were ripped directly from the loved one we were with. But now, lost has a whole new meaning to us. If we, now as adults, begin to think we are lost, we do much more than cry or shiver.

Many will shut down and sulk with the realization that their life has fallen to shit. Others of us may become angry. Oh no, they don’t do anything to find their way, they just get angry. It doesn’t accomplish anything (neither did the first one) and it makes me kind of what to slap and or beat said person to an angry pulp. And then another “tactic” is doing something about it. Personally, I choose the latter option. If you want to find your way, or be somebody, take a tip from “The Sister Act 2”:

          

”If you wanna be somebody, if you wanna go somewhere,
you better wake up and pay attention” 

    Now, that may be the simplest way of saying what I’m trying to convey here, but it gets most of my point across fairly well. Growing up and becoming adults, for some people, comes with losing touch with life and coming to the conclusion that no one cares.
      People care about you; stop whining about your lonliness. Buck up; your life will only change if you take matters into your own hands and take from life what YOU want.
      And if none of this seems obtainable to you, it may never actually be, unless you try. I could go all yoda on you right now, but I’ll refrain and leave my quirky movie quotes for another time. May you find your way today, and remember that there is always someone who cares.

Anxiety

"Each time, I imagine it going perfectly. If negative thoughts creep in, I push them out of my head and start over again."

-Darrin Prescott

Here is the problem with all people who are prone to get nervous, myself included- we let our fear overtake our perfectly able minds and let ourselves lose. The few situations in which I have grievously let myself down are memories that are still slightly tender in my mind, as it probably is for anyone. It’s an almost out of body experience, when your nerves take over. You can hear yourself doing badly, and you want to stop, ask for another try, do it the way you know you can, but it’s like you’re incapable of controlling your actions.

You see, since I’m incapable of imagining my brain as tissues and neurons, I imagine it as a small factory, run by cheerful workers who each have vital tasks to keep me running through the day. There are those who sit infront of screens and input the words that come out of my mouth, others that press buttons whenever I’m supposed to feel hot or whenever I’m supposed to feel chilly. And I extend this metaphor to my failures, as days when the factory breaks down. ‘There’s been a freak accident in the word inputting department!’, I will hear someone exclaim on the day of a very important recital, ‘there are no survivors!’. Frantic factory workers running around trying to recover what is left out of a completely wrecked system. The buttons are incomprehensible, the controllers, nothing but charred bones.

And then, when I go infront of an audience, and glance at the collective stares, I positively freeze. How unreliable of the factory workers. Next time on, I should really try to enforce that no-smoking inside office policy.

Deep and intelligent metaphors aside, psychologists say that visualization can play a key role in doing what you want to successfully. Darrin Prescott, who has coordinated and performed stunts in commercials and movies such as Moneyball, Drive, and Gone, says he pictures the entire scenario in fine detail at least 20 times from beginning to end.

Each time, I imagine it going perfectly. If negative thoughts creep in, I push them out of my head and start over again.

In his field of expertise, I believe there is very little room for error. It makes humiliating yourself infront of several people far less detestable. And while I do, on occasion try and do this before something important, I have never really done it in fine detail, nor have the outcomes ever really been positive. If you walk into a room for a job interview having visualized exactly how it will happen, I suppose any experience, even imaginary, will help make you do a better job.

It's Time to Slow Down.

"As human beings, we're very materialistic and have all this stuff-furs and cars and diamond and money."

-Smokey Robinson

I think that we are obsessive about materialistic pleasures and get carried away in our rapid, daily routine that we forget to enjoy life’s simplicities. The chill of the midnight breeze, the drip of water against the windowpane, a laugh with a close friend… Sometimes, I think that we’ve even forgotten where all the clichés have come from.

At least, I know that I had until I forgot to charge my iPod for a long road trip to Nampa a few years ago. It’s a traditional sort of trip – an annual trip my family takes. It’s a peaceful kind of trip that allows for time to mull. At least, it would have been had I not taken this little device with me every time we went, for my earphones would slip into my ears and I would be engrossed in a lonely, secluded world. A world of fast, rhythmic noise. The conversations between my parents would be blocked out, my brothers would be blocked out, and so would the constant whir of the cars driving past. Everything would be rapid, quick, throbbing, and pulsing.  Pink's voice would invade my thoughts – my mind. Her meaningless words reverberating within my head.

It was different this time around– Pink was not there, and neither was The Script. I was annoyed with myself at first, and moped in the car for a bit as time crawled past like a tired snail. So I sat idly and stared out the window, watching the trees go by.

And then I began to observe. I watched different worlds spin around me as we drove and drove. I liked the feeling that rushed through me – a peace, a calm, a quiet thrill – all combined together. I was able to let my mind wander off into the distance and muse. To reflect. To identify myself with the greater scheme of things.

I was really part of my family that day – it was perhaps, the first time I laughed and joked with them for quite a while. It was also perhaps, the first time I watched the sky in its glory – transforming from a tumult of a passionate orange and vermillion to a gentle blue…

Yes, I watched a sunset. I started watching sunsets after that day too. In Boise on top of the roof, at home through my window, in the car on the way back from Idaho.

I believe that the beautiful things in life show up when you slow down – life isn’t a marathon, after all. There’s all the time in the world.

Words of a Feather

"A singing bird never wants to be caged"

-Lou Holtz

Though singing birds never  want to be caged, they are often better off caged, and maybe I’m no different. Maybe it’s safer, biting my tongue and shoving my hands deep in my pockets when the urge to delineate my woes shivers its way up my spine, shaking the rust from the back of my teeth and loosening the hinges on my jaw. I’m constantly reminded that the world outside my mind is far too dangerous, too brutal for my fragile thoughts, for my feeble words. But every now and then those words get the better of me. They convince me that their songs are worth hearing, that they’ll survive the hell that awaits them. Then, eager and hopeful, they jump off my teeth like a diving board, spreading their wings and gliding out into the world of the unknown, the world of wars waged to divide and battles fought to conquer. I watch as they hang suspended in the air, wings spread, small and beautiful against the ominous background, innocent if only for a fleeting moment. But, of course, beauty has no place here.

I cringe as the shots ring out from all directions, as everyone around me opens fire upon my winged thoughts. I shut my eyes tightly against the firing of guns, arrows, cannons: delivering the message loud and clear that the airspace between me and the world is better left unclouded by my superfluous banter. I try not to watch as they drop from the sky, my unsuspecting words, but my eyes force themselves open. Wings broken, hearts still, they crash to the ground, silenced.

I want to gather them one by one, my feathered thoughts, gently in my hands; I would take them somewhere safe and give them a proper burial, for they were once so near and dear to me. But I’m afraid of what lies in the battlefield. I’m afraid of the landmines and the barbed wire and the trenches. So I bow my head, refasten the locks on my sore, stiffened jaw, and turn my back on the carnage, on the dirt and grass and the haze and smoke. I turn from my defeated birds, form the bodies of my barely spoken words, and I leave them.