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this is how it works
you're young until you're not
you love until you don't
you try until you can't
you laugh until you cry
you cry until you laugh
and everyone must breathe
until their dying breath
this is how it works
you peer inside yourself
you take the things you like
and try to love the things you took
and then you take that love you made
and stick it into some--
someone else's heart
pumping someone else's blood
and walking arm in arm
you hope it don't get harmed
but even if it does
you'll just do it all again"
i've listened to regina spektor so many times and i've never really paid attention to these lyrics specifically. but i saw these lyrics again today and i really like them. i think they express a very pragmatic yet optimistic view on life. she's saying there is a beginning and end to everything, and after an end, a new beginning is waiting. from my own experiences, i know that refusing to let go of something that should end makes a new beginning very hard to see, even if it's right in front of me. on one hand, you think you may never find what you're looking for in terms of happiness, relationships, or fulfillment. on the other hand, when you lose these things, you'll find them again.
it's so easy for me to get stuck in a rut dwelling on what could've been or how things could be different. but those thoughts are so hypothetical that they don't even have real weight on how life is progressing. still, i am caught thinking about these things. this song to me is very optimistic. it's about not having regrets, about living and loving the best that you know how, and being able to move on knowing that you gave it an honest try.
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| Things have been going really well I would say. Exciting things are happening.
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| i came back home about 10 days ago after my summer internship ended. i really miss that experience and those people. i will miss this entire summer even though i think it was one of the most emotionally turbulent. however i think i finally got a grip on my craziness and i may have an upper hand on it now. who knows.
this whole summer i was extremely stressed out that this year would not turn out the way i wanted. but now, i feel differently. maybe i control things because i feel like if i don't, then things won't turn out the way i want. but that is just cowardly. so i've decided to stop controlling and start participating. this summer, i was obsessed with thinking that i must obtain the Goal to be happy but now i'm thinking that there are other ways to be happy and i was so blinded trying to acheive the Goal that i've completely forgotten that i can be happy in so many other ways.
this year will be great. i've decided. and i will remember my self worth and remember to celebrate a lot.
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| There are 15 days left before I finish my internship. It has been a weird summer of growth and retraction of growth that surpasses many before it. What an interesting situation to be such that worries and obligations seem so distant, quarantined by hundreds of miles of travel and blocked at the doorstep by an unwillingness to grow up. Being here is so different than any real life phase I've been through. I live, sleep, work, eat, and play on a college campus, but this is not college. There are no sleepless nights spent in the library nervously anticipating a big exam or the incessant day to day grind of trying to stay on the big academic ball. I work a 9-5 job in an office in a cubicle and report to a boss, but this is not a real life job either. I don't worry about paying rent or what to cook for dinner because all of it is taken care of and no one cares if i show up at noon. On top of everything, this internship is very focused on the intern itself and offers seminars and speakers that give lectures entitled "Finding Your Right Livelihood" or "Research Fellowships in an University Setting" which have been very beneficial to my "finding" myself.
Even with all of these treats, I still find myself anticipating the end of the program on a daily basis. Being here has triggered one of the few times that I've been so chronically homesick. It is not just a longing to go home, but also to be with all of my friends, experience the familiar culture and atmosphere of my own campus and pick up the relationships that were put on hiatus by the end of the schoolyear.
I have so many questions about the coming schoolyear, mostly about one of two things: where my life is headed after college and who will be there with me when that time comes. I can't really decide on answers to either of these questions so it only makes me think about them more obsessively. The only sure thing I know is that I must remember be true to myself when the time comes to answer these questions. And if that is the case, how hard can it really be? Right? To be true to myself...
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| on moving to a new house:
recently, my parents bought their dream house. and it's great. not exactly what I had in mind for a dream house but it's cute, with a phenomenal view of the mountains. maybe a grand marble staircase and a balcony that opens to the morning sun from my bedroom would make it dreamier but i can't complain. oh but the rules of the new house. there are so many. in the old house, anything went and we gathered 9 years of memories on our walls, carpets, and floors in the form of pizza, grape juice, and crayons (mostly from my brother :)). making the bed was optional...and passe. but now, my parents are determined to transform our sloppy lifestyles to mimic that of competitive dog show trainers. and their dream house is to be our prized miniature poodle. it requires constant manicuring and canoodling, which, as the sloppy people that we are, we are still learning to do well. and you know what i'm talking about, it's before you go to sleep and you have to take off layers of showy yet can't be comfortable comforters, decorative pillows and shams from the showcase bed (and what the heck is a sham anyway...i did not know these subtleties until this week) before you can climb into it with your not so showy yet comfortable blanket that was hiding in the closet all day. and in the old house, i could discern who was walking up or down the stairs by their footsteps. without thinking, i knew which light switch turned on which lights but could navigate my way in the dark. well, there are a bazillion light switches in this new house that never seem to turn on the right light and i still can't tell who is in which room by just following their voice.
when we came for the final walkthrough a few weeks ago, the owners let us walk through their house and smiled politely as we marveled and wowed at all the novelties of their house. at the same time, we are selling our old house and a couple times, i've had to be there to open the door for the realtor when she brings people to tour the house. usually i sit in a corner out of their way but always i feel like i'm being invaded. always i feel uncomfortable that strangers are walking through my home asking what seem to me like stupid questions.
"so there's another room in the basement that can be a bedroom?" "does the yard end where the woods start or is that all part of the property?" "oh, and look honey, there's a lovely bay window too!" of course the room in the basement is a bedroom...look at the closet space and the extra bathroom down there. no, the property ends where the woods begin like it's suppose to. and no, there's not a lovely bay window...there's MY lovely bay window whose memories you have just cheapened by making a sweeping overgeneralization which to you was probably an afterthought anyway. so i'm protective of the house and when they leave, usually coming up with some reason to bow our gracefully because they didn't like it in the first place (i.e. you have a beautiful house but it's much too big for just the two of us, your backyard is not big enough to have a pet), i want to say to them, no i don't approve of you anyway.
so perhaps the previous owners of our house felt the same way as i did when we plowed through their house and wreaked havoc with our gawky and graceless interior designing and reckless treatment of their lawn. but regardless, it will be fun and interesting to see what kind of memories will be made in this house and how long before it becomes a real home.
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