June 23, 2015 by Giulietta Nardone
Begin Anywhere
What I’ve observed in life is that many people do not have the courage to begin the things they really want to do. Sure, they’ll begin something that falls into the default living category. But the juicy life things that will free them from some captured element of themselves — those can be hard to begin. They involve a “go for it attitude” and a leap of self-faith. Unfortunately, the ability to trust ourselves to set our own course in life has been repressed until it’s so well hidden even we can’t find it within ourselves.
The good news: it’s still there. You just need some gentle coaxing to get you to take that first step Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu calls the journey of a thousand miles.
We have many fears about taking that first step: we’ll disappear into journey quicksand, we’ll get lost in the unknown mist, we’ll be scared once we leave the beaten path.
To me those fears are the point. I don’t know where I’m going and scared as I may be, I know that to live a wild, juicy life I need to step into the unknown, embrace it as something that will be cool and unforgettable. (more…)
June 2, 2015 by Giulietta Nardone
True Love Can Never Be Erased
This weekend I watched the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet. Not sure how I missed it ten years ago, but my library’s DVD collection gave me a second chance to view it.
I loved it.
Creative. Clever. Complicated. Compelling.
Without giving the entire movie away, it’s a maze-like romantic tale about the staying power of true love. You can try to erase it, but true love will always try to find its way back into your life. In the case of the movie, this love was between two people. Outside of this movie, this love can also be between a person and the things in life that make his or her heart sing. I’m sure you’ve heard of Thoreau’s quote: Most men lead quiet lives of desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. And he wrote that back in the 1800’s.
If we try to repress our true loves, we end up repressing ourselves. I am convinced that much of the brawls that break out around the world happen because the people involved have been divorced from the activities that would make their hearts sing. You may have noticed that most brawls happen to younger folks in their twenties. It’s a weird decade for many. The one decade I would never want to repeat.
Somehow in my twenties I got disconnected from everything I loved in life. It didn’t happen over night, it just became more apparent when I graduated from college and had to carve my own path through life and wasn’t sure how. Young adults go from being told what to do, to being held responsible for their lives. The endless waiting and preparation to do most anything can stifle a person’s natural ability to just go for it, like I did as a young girl.
The best advice we can give the young is to say at an early age, “Just go for it.” It gets harder to do that once you’ve been told, “Don’t go for it, until you have all your ducks lined up.” (more…)
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