"This could really be the good life."

Hope. Faith. Love.

What do these words really mean? It's one of the biggest questions that every individual in the world searchs for at one point in their life. I could sit here and load you with a whole bunch of bullshit that would make you feel better about the fact that no one really has any answers. I could even make you feel like at least I know what I'm talking about. Maybe that would make things like hope, faith, and love real. Feelings and emotions are just that. There arent higher meanings or signs that string you to the right path. Our life is exactly what we make it. Happy, sad, angry, selfish, your pick.

The reason people have such trouble accepting happiness is because theyre too focused on figuring out if they are or not. How about we just feel it? Does this mean that if we approach life in this way then we'll never experience sadness? No, it doesnt. Sadness is a part of life just as much as happiness. Some people say, " You have to go through the bad to get to the good." These people are very smart. They're willing to except that experiencing sadness is just another way of appretiating happiness. Instead of focusing so much on what our mind is telling us, we need to spend more time feeling. If you wake up one day and feel like a truck hit you, then lay in bed all day, cry, and allow the grief to take you over. Then one day, you'll wake up, the sun will be shinning through your window and something will hit you. You'll get out of bed, you'll go to the mirror and you'll smile. Maybe this happiness is short lived, but it's not about being happy all the time, it's about letting yourself feel whatever you want to feel.

One that note, this is no way means that we should ignore our thoughts, we just can't let them override us. Follow your gut, follow your heart, however you want to put it. If you dont, there will be so much you miss out on and ultimately regret starts to set in, leaving you with endless thoughts of what if. What if I got on that plane, what if I ran after her, What if I finished college, what if I let him go. You could spend your life thinking up what ifs, but we should be living those what ifs. Sometimes it works out exactly how we want it to and other times we're crushed to our core, but at least we don't have to wonder what if.

I had a conversation with my sister over breakfast today and I explained that if we never took chances or risked everything we're sure about, we would never reap the rewards. Taking the same route to work everyday, staying in a doomed relationship, doing your laundry every single Sunday. You might get along fine with this, but eventually there's a detour, she leaves you, and your laundry machine breaks. What do you do then? Everything you knew is wrong and you never ventured out or took a risk to know anything different. Do yourself a favor and learn a second route to work, let them go to fall in love again, and do your laundry on a Wednesday. It's amazing what a difference it makes.

Every experience makes us learn, grow, and mature. If we didn't have them, we'd be a bunch of horny teenagers our whole life, making a complete mockary of ourselves. Maybe things like hope, faith, and love arent about holding on when you want to give up, or believing in miracles, or thinking life is suppose to have some magical meaning that leads you to the right destiny. Maybe hope, faith, and love are how we cope. They're just how we get from a to b. They're how we justify our actions, they're how we grief. If we didn't have them, how would anything make sense? Why would we follow our heart, why would we live out our what ifs, why would anything have any value? Instead of defining things, we just need to live it.

I read this quote the other day that said, "Everyday you meet thousands of people, and then you meet one that makes you question everything you believed about yourself." I could write a novel about this one quote! It has truth behind it but it's also very deceiving. On one end, I see so much truth to this because I do believe that meeting one person can make you question everything you have ever believed about yourself. On the other end, this person may not love you back, they may be married, they may even be someone you're related to. As humans, we romanticize everything, which lets face it is how I view everything, but we seem to think that our happiness and our love depends on one person. Falling in love is one of the greatest things in the world. I fall in love with my nephew everytime I see him. Does that make me a creepier? No, it makes me a really grateful aunt. Falling in love is not niave or crazy. It takes one second to fall in love with someone. So what's the point of all this? I guess when it comes down to it all I can really do hope that my faith will lead me to love, in any form. That's how I get from a to b. That is how I cope. That is how I get over the men that break my heart. You can't take away this girls shine.

Until Next time, Over n' Out!
MW