People Don't Always Suck

Saving kittens from being drowned in the flood. He actually swam out to get the stranded kittens.

2 young kids devise a plan to save a stray puppy
 that had fallen into the ravine.

   With everything going on in the world right now it can be hard to have a positive or optimistic out look on humanity. The other day I came across some pictures captioned “people don’t always suck,” and they had people being caught in random acts of kindness. In other words, I think they were trying to show that for all the horrible things that happen daily, there are also good things that people do. From the get go, the whole point of this blog was to be a reminder that inspirational and good things happen all around us daily, so today for my last blog post I hope to restore a little bit of your faith in humanity. 

I think these pictures truly show that anyone can be an inspiration; you don’t have to be superman, you just have to be willing to put yourself out there and care about someone or something! I recently read a quote by C.S Lewis that said,

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”



17-year-old Meghan Vogel was in last place in the 3,200-meter run when she caught up to competitor Arden McMath. Arden's body was begining to give out and instead of running past her (and avoiding a last place finish) Meghan helped her along for 30 meters and pushed her over the finish line before she crossed it herself.  

Thank-you readers for reading and responding to my blog! If anything, I hope it made you think about all the inspirational, fun, kind or just plain awesome things that happen in our lives and sometimes other peoples. I know for me having to think up 2 inspirational things every week has definitely made me more aware of how much good is in the world.  If you are interested in any more pictures, Here is the ULR for where I got most of them: http://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/pictures-that-will-restore-your-faith-in-humanity

 







THOSE friends....

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/the-six-different-friends-everyone-should-have/story-fnet0he2-1226505482113

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/relationships/5-types-friends-everyone-should-have

As our senior year draws to an end some of us are left wondering if we will still be friends with the people we have grown up with, after everyone goes off and does their own thing. Certainly some people will keep in touch and other will drift because a lot of friendship is about individual needs, and those are constantly changing. Most people though do have a couple people that they will be friends with for life, whether they have met them yet or not. I searched Google a came across two articles about “The Friends Everyone needs”. As I read these articles I found myself thinking of one of my friends for every title. Personally some of my dearest friends are people that I can go for long periods of time without seeing but it never feels awkward when we are reunited. I think with those types of friends you are just bounded together by your similarities and the things you have experienced together. Friendships are as unique as the pair of people in them though, and every friendship will have its own goods and bads.  

I decided to write about friendship as something that inspires me because I think we often take for granted how important community or socialization is to us. I heard that our generation is considered the most “lonely” because of our reduced need to actual socializations (We often use technology instead). When I heard this I thought, shouldn’t it be the opposite though, because we can constantly talk to people 24/7? Researcher’s show however that we feel more connected to other people when we talk to them in person or at least hear their voice. They are saying that loneliness can even be linked to depression and make you more prone to illness!

Humans like to belong to a community; it’s just how we are. For me personally I know that when I go out and talk with a friend it makes me feel more involved and happy than if I were to text them. Plan a dinner party with all your friends; go make your own little community, after all, everyone could use a friend.

Spoken Word

Okay, I have found a new obsession. Spoken Word. Pretty much spoken word is people who perform the poetry they write. It is like a mix of slam poetry and rap, it also sometimes has a beat or tune in the background. I was on a blogging site a couple weeks ago and I kept coming across these videos of people performing spoken word, and that is when my interest was sparked. It really is an art to be able to create and perform poetry the way these people do. I think what makes it so special is that you see the people who wrote the poetry

performing it, and because of that you get to see all the emotion behind the poem.

 I think it is inspiring because it shows people being vulnerable, raw and real in a lot of cases. Just like music it can be very relatable and can be very inspirational. I also like that because it is live, because often times you get to hear the audience interacting with the artist. Often times during these performances people will snap or shout a little "mhm" if they agree or like a phrase in the poem. While performing most artists rely on hand gestures and facial expressions to aid in the entertainment factor of the performance. I have however seen some artist actually act it out.

The spoken word artist in this video is named David Bowden. He performs his poetry live but this poem got a lot of attention and was turned into a music video. I absolutely love it. If you have the chance to search spoken word on YouTube, let me know what you think!

Music to my Ears

     I was trying to think of what I could write about for my next post while I was walking to school this morning. In my half zombie state I couldn’t complete my thought because one of my favorite songs came on my iPod. Then it occurred to me, that I haven’t written a post on MUSIC, one of the most inspirational and influential things in our world. Everyone has their own preference and own taste in music but I think what it comes down to is what is easiest for you to relate to. That is why there is such thing as main stream music, because most people can easily relate to it.

     I think music is inspiring because it is something that has been a factor in human life throughout most of history. It can mean so many different things; war calls, lullabies, warnings, mourning and praises. I think music also has this way of evoking emotion from people and making them feel like other people feel the way that they do. I have always thought it was interesting that we don’t realise how prominent music is in our society. I know for me I never leave the house without my ear buds, and I can’t imagine going on a walk or a run without my music.

   People even get protective of the gender of music or the bands they listen to. You know what I’m talking about, like when your friend shows you a new song or band they like and you just don’t really like it or relate to it but they want so badly for you to “get it” the way they do.  I am not very musical so lyrics are important in the music I listen to. I love when songs have “smart” lyrics, or new phrases that you have never heard before. I am a huge fan of acoustic artist’s, I like hearing the raw instruments and the natural voices (with voice cracks, and not always perfected tunes). Acoustic music reminds me of singing around a campfire, or listening to someone sing without them knowing and that is why I like it. What type of music do you listen to? Why do you relate with it?   

Just a speck

         The first time I got to touch the ocean was last summer, when I was in Panama. Half of my time there was spent living, among a tribe of Kuna people on their island Aquadup. While helping with daily chores one day, my friend turned to me and said, “What’s your favorite thing about nature?” You can image that living on a tropical island; there were thousands of things around me that I could have chosen. While I was looking at my surroundings trying to come up with an answer,

       I remembered that the nature on the island that I thought was so beautiful in that moment, is the same nature that terrified us at night. Forks of lightning that crack and lung towards the island, thunder that rattles the hut and rain that pounds though the roof.  After thinking about this I told her, “I like things that remind me how small I am”. For instance the ocean can be so beautiful, fun to explore and enjoy. It also though has a reputation for being destructive though, and being home to animals such as sharks and whales. Looking out at ocean reminds me that even though it is beautiful it also has the power to destroy, and that demands a certain kind of respect.

       Living in the city sometimes it is easy to forget that there are things that people cannot control. In the city everything is built for people by people, and people control and manage what they have created. We are reminded of how small we are though, when a storm hits and wipes out all that we have created in a matter of minutes. I don’t mean small in a bad way though, I just mean it is easy for us to get arrogant and think we are invinsible,  we forget that there is SO much we don’t know.

    When you look at our galaxy we aren’t even a speck in the Milky Way. We don’t even know close to everything about our planet or even ourselves, none the less our galaxy! I embrace the small feeling. It’s a humbling experience to be reminded that no one knows everything and the big problems we worry about and have in our lives may not be a big as we think.  

 

Awesome!!!

The first time I was introduces to the “Book of Awesome” was when I was at camp. At campfire we would always read a couple ‘awesomes’. For those of you who don’t know what the book is all about let me fill you in; the book of awesome is pretty much a huge list of awesome things in life. For instance, turning over your pillow to the cold side… Awesome! This brilliant idea of a book was thought up by Neil Pasricha. Neil describes himself as an average American guy who started a blog about life’s free little joys that happen in our daily lives. Neil’s blog became extremely popular, so he turned the concept into a book; he now is the author of 4 awesome books. When I was reading the book sometimes I would come across things he wrote about and be like, “other people like that too!?”, so it was cool to see that other people notice these little things too.  After reading it, I am much more aware of the awesome little things that go on around me every day.

 Here are some things I think are awesome; unexpected apologies, so when you get in a fight with like a sibling and you’re so mad at them. There you are sitting there stewing about how angry you are and then out of nowhere they come apologize. Fight over, Awesome. Making a new friend, like that moment when someone goes from being an acquaintance to a friend. For instance, you go to a new camp and you don’t know anyone so you have to actually work at getting to know people. Then the end of you time together, when you have to say goodbye to these people that just a week ago were strangers now are friends, Awesome. OK my last ones are kind of similar but getting your head massaged or you back drawn on. I remember in grade school, when we would have story time on the carpet me and all my friends would sit in a line and draw on each other’s backs. Awesome, haha.  What are some of yours?

Ps, you can check out Neil’s blog at:        http://1000awesomethings.com/

‘World's Ugliest Woman’: Stop staring Start Learning

When searching for something the write about online I came across the story of Lizzie Velasquez. Lizzie was born with a rare medical condition (so rare only 2 other people in the world might have it) where she does not have any adipose tissue or fat cells. This means she cannot store or build muscle or gain weight. Lizzie was born at 2 pounds 10 ounces and was expected not to survive. Her parent explained that Lizzie had to wear doll clothes for the first couple months of her life because newborn baby clothes were too big. The doctors did not think Lizzie would ever be able to walk, talk or live a normal life but now at 23 Lizzie is beating the odds. She cannot store nutrients so she has to eat about every 20 minutes to have enough energy to get through the day. She is a mere 60 pounds with zero percent body fat. Lizzie is far more prone to injury because she has no muscle, even things such as walking can cause stress fractures in her feet. When Lizzie was in high school, which is a very insecure time for most adolescence especially if you are ‘different’, her classmates made a YouTube video nominating her the ‘Ugliest Woman in the world.’ I can’t imagine how horrible and humiliating that must have felt. The comments left of the video were just as malicious. Lizzie took revenge in the form of success. She became a motivational talking to people about embracing uniqueness, dealing with bullies and overcoming obstacles. She has written two books titled, “Beautiful Lizzie” and “Be Beautiful, Be You”. She is also a senior at Texas State University. Lizzie explained that her life has not always been easy but she would not have it any other way because she has learned so much and helped so many people through her pain. I think this is so inspiring because Lizzie is showing people that beauty is more than just looks and that people don’t need to feel bad because they don’t look like the photo shopped models in the magazines.   I think it is courageous of Lizzie to take her negative experiences and turn them into ways to help and uplift other people.

I do...forever?

Okay ,so this semester I am taking a class about family units in a diverse society. I just finished the portion on relationships, mainly marriages. I think growing up everyone has their own imaginary idea of what marriage is like, and what theirs will be like.

I think my idea of what marriage is came from a lot of different sources to create this collage of an ideal partnership that will be wonderful and perfect. I took parts of my parent’s relationship, their friend’s relationship and what the media and Disney told me marriage was like and pieced it together into my own dream of how it will be. Obviously though, now that I am older, I realize that my dream idea of marriage isn’t the reality of it. Not to say that marriages can’t be wonderful, I’m sure they can! All I’m saying is, I never saw any of the princesses divorce Prince Charming, and according to reality nearly half of them would be. Anyways the course has helped me I would say to get a better understanding of what makes a marriage so hard, why half of them doomed to fail.

After reading through all the course content I literally felt like I had sat through multiple marriage counselling sessions haha. I think after seeing everything that can go wrong in a marriage I gained a whole new appreciation for life-long marriages. For me it is inspiring to see that it can be done, but not only that, that it can also be done happily. I love seeing couples that have been together for the majority of their lives and still love and respect each other; it’s quite a feat I would say to share your life with a person. I just think it it’s cool to not only see a couple that has stayed together so long because they are married, but because they genuinely like the other person and enjoy sharing their life experiences with one another.   

Nostalgia

The other night I had the weirdest dream, I was stuck in a world that was made out of candy (Kind of like candy land, but darker). Usually I only remember my dreams briefly for a couple minutes in the morning but for some reason I could recall every detail of this dream. It wasn’t until a couple days later I realized that it wasn’t so much a dream as it was déjà vu. When I was younger computer games would come in cereal boxes if you bought the sugary kind. I finally realized that this candy land I was picturing was from a computer game I used to be obsessed with when I was a kid. The game was called Pyjama Sam and you got to be a super hero, solving problems (probably educational now that I think of it…) and exploring a junk food world that he got sucked into AKA the kitchen cupboard.  I remember sitting at our really old family computer and being amazed by the graphics of this game haha. Anyway this random case of nostalgia caused me to go my own adventure trying to find where my once prized possessions had gotten off to. I will admit to you readers, that yes, when I found my Pyjama Sam game I tried it out, just to see if it still worked of course….. hahaha. The game reminded me of all my other treasures that have become old “stuff” over the years; I remember playing for hours with Polly Pockets that I bought with my birthday money.  I got a little bit of “Toy Storyitis” after finding all this stuff.  I think nostalgia is a more powerful tool than people give it credit for. I think it can inspire people because it often reminds people of who they were before they were submerged into the ‘real world’. Showing how far we have come and changed yet how some things never change. Nostalgia is just awesome. Go find you old toys.

Toy storyitis: When I look at all my old toys, sometimes I imagine/wonder if they miss me like Buzz and Woody missed Andy when he grew up…HAHA!