dangerously beautiful

a simple concept was brought to life for me by my ethics professor yesterday in class - the most beautiful things in life have the potential to be equally as dangerous. its like, we aren't allowed to experience some of the most breathtaking and beautiful sights and emotions without acknowledging the potential dangers they also present.

most people go through an average part of their young life without understanding the flip side to all they feel is beautiful. when you're little, you don't have any comprehension of the things that can hurt you in life. but it only takes one experience to begin and change the way you view the world; that innocence can disappear in the blink of an eye.

you learn the sun that you find joy in playing in can sunburn you. you learn the pool where you splash away your summers that it can take the lives of others. you learn the beach and its crashing waves has sharks and jellyfish and waves that can destroy. you learn the beautiful roses outside of your house have thorns. you learn that the people you love most in your life have the ability to hurt and betray you in ways you never thought possible.

just because you learn that something has dangers, does that take away the initial beauty of it? if you experience these dangers, should you shut yourself off to something you once got so much enjoyment out of? i wouldn't say you should shut yourself off, but you have to develop some degree of caution that you regard things of beauty with. i really do not believe you can go through life disregarding the dangers in life, but this is not to say your cautions should be so high that they interfere with the way you live your life.

it seems to be a little easier, in general, to define these caution levels in external experiences, like roses and thorns and the sun and sunburns. its when you get to the stripped-down, raw human emotions that things get hard.

i would consider myself a bit of a hopeless romantic - i believe that love is truly a beautiful human emotion, to experience oneself as well as to give to others. but i know, from my own life experience and witnessing those of others that love is also one of the most dangerous things that exists. when you truly love someone, your heart welcomes them into your life and you allow yourself to deeply connect with them...so deep that if that connection is ever broken, you can literally feel your insides ache with an indescribable pain that is inequivalent to anything else you will ever experience in your life.

it only takes a single broken connection to seriously alter your mindset on love as a whole. its so much easier to be overcautious with your heart, to guard it, to put walls up that are nearly impossible to break down...because you don't want to ever experience what you felt again. it feels dangerous, it feels scary...so why subject yourself to that again?

i have to remind myself of this almost every day...not everyone you love is going to leave you. its hard to fight the urge to shut love out of your life for good after you get heartbroken, and its even harder if you experienced this sort of pain more than once. you have to understand that despite your awful experiences, it is not a prediction of all future experiences.

by no means am i an expert at any of this. i've been hurt in the past and it is never a struggle that is far from my mind. but i truly do believe that there is too much beauty in this world that i want to experience to let a danger get in my way. part of what makes love so beautiful to me is the passion that is behind it; passion does not come from an easy path. passion derives from battling and fighting and setbacks and victories and downfalls. it's like my mom used to tell me when i was little: if you fall, get back up, dust yourself off and try again.

Motivated!

break has left me rejuvenated and re-motivated. i'm ready to push through these next two weeks of class and through finals week. i want to enjoy my month off for christmas...not anything like the ten days i experienced last year with winter training camp looming like a giant black rain cloud over my head. a month of straight family, friends, relaxation and love.

i'm dedicating these next three weeks to: homework, studying, writing, working out, work, and possibly some pleasure reading to keep myself sane. this is the plan. do i always stick to the plan? no. but i'm going to try really really hard.

nineteen days. i've got two countdowns, both ending on the same day. by noon on December 16th, i will be one very happy girl. not that i'm not already, i'll just be extra happy. :)

The Act of Giving Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving, world! i've been sitting here contemplating what i would like to write about this day, and in the meantime i've received three "happy thanksgiving" mass texts and watched about 20 people update their statuses on facebook with something along the same lines. while i don't doubt that all of these people mean what they say, there is something less sincere about reading a short message that is sent to you and all of their other "facebook friends" or numbers in their phones.

so i'm going to stay away from the phone, stay away from the facebook updates and limit my media expression to this blog alone. if you don't get a text or a status update from me, which i highly doubt you will, don't think it doesn't mean i'm not grateful for you in my life. although today is the recognized "day to give thanks," i would rather show you through-out the year how much you mean to me than let you know out of a feeling of obligation once a year.

don't take this the wrong way - i will be celebrating all i have to be grateful for today. and that is quite a lot because despite its ups and downs, life is truly beautiful! under this umbrella of life, what is it that i am thankful for?

i am thankful for where i live.

i have a roof to live under and i do not want to devalue that fact. but i am so grateful for that roof to be here, in Ventura. how many places in the world can you go out on the evening before thanksgiving and sit on the beach, with the islands clear in the distance, and watch the sun set over the ocean? absolutely breathtaking.

and not only am i thankful for living here in Ventura and in California, but i am grateful to live in a country where i am blessed with so many freedoms and so many opportunities. i am blessed to live a life of where individuality is not only and option, but encouraged.

i am thankful for all of the people who have impacted my life.

positive and negative influences alike, to those who have hurt me and those who have lifted me back up, all have helped me grow and made me into the person that i am today. i am grateful for the strength you have brought forth in me, the perseverance you have instilled in me, and the inspiration you have given me.

i am thankful for a life of relative comfort.

i live a life where i am lucky to have food on the table, a bed to sleep in, clean water to drink, means of cleanliness, and clothing to wear. i work to have money in my pocket and i attend an outstanding university so that i may heighten my education and work toward a good future for myself.

i am thankful for my family and my close circle of friends.

i am lucky to receive love from so many people in my life and for that reason i am able to give love in return, to them as well as others. the backbone of my being, i will not go through and name these people because i treat them in a way that they should know who they are. or at least i try to.

on this Thanksgiving, as well as everyday through-out the year, remember those who are not as blessed as you are. remember those who struggle to make it through each day and those who sacrifice some of their blessings to ensure that you are able to lead the life you do. "Remember it's not what we say about our blessings but how we use them."

remember that nothing in life is permanent, so you should never take anything for granted. be thankful today, but do not let this be your only day of giving thanks.

Big Ugly Monster(s)

i am not a jealous person, but there is one thing that gets under my skin and makes that big green ugly monster show up. every. single. time. i don't have a right to feel this way, its over a matter of which i have no more possession or right to than any one else. but it drives me absolutely mad. ignoring the underlying bigger issue that this is an indication of, it makes relatively no sense. sorry for the vagueness, but i'm not quite at a spot to blog about this and have it actually be coherent.

i feel that i'm dealing with a lot of big ugly monsters right now. they aren't all big maybe, but regardless of their size i feel like i'm in defense mode at all times right now. my hands are balled up, my eyes flitting, and my steps quick. i keep pushing those ugly monsters away, but maybe its time to let them in...one by one, and sit down and have a conversation with them. use my words instead of my fists like they teach you from the time you can talk. i've been dancing back and forth between pushing them all away and trying to let them all in at once; both tasks far too overwhelming.

maybe if i let one monster in at a time, allow him to make himself comfy and feel right at home, exchange words and have dialogue; maybe i will be able to communicate my assertiveness over him and thus, with no purpose in my life any longer he will just...poof...disappear. or at least shrink down to a minuscule and cowering little bugger who has virtually disappeared.

"What did you run from?"

so i was sitting here pondering what to blog about, toying around with an idea that wasn't so important or necessary to write about, when i remembered that i went on a run the other day. anyone who knows me knows that this is very far from normal for me. i told my dad and he said, "What were you running from?" he was being sarcastic of course because that's my dad's sense of humor. but it was even funnier to me, because as i jogged down the stairs to start my run, that's exactly what i thought i was doing - running away from something.

as i ran, i began to think about what i was running away from. it is true, i was running away from something, but not so much as i was running looking for something else. running is hard for me; it isn't something i've ever been gifted in and its never been something i've necessarily enjoyed doing either. the whole time i run, i think and i fight the urge to quit...its challenging. but the rush of the cold air, my feet pounding, and the heavy breaths remind me that i'm living and challenges like this are part of living. you aren't always going to like it, it's not always going to be fun, but you can fight through it and it gets better and it gets easier.

it's hard. you may not enjoy it. but the more you work at it, the easier it gets. it will never be flat out easy; life isn't meant to be that way. after a tough week with little resolution, it may seem contradictory to want to add more challenge and more difficulty. but i ran to look for that challenge and to feel that challenge and to feel life.

"Courtney is Forgiving"

we are doing a virtue development project in my ethics class for the remainder of the semester, but i'm not sure how much i believe in an assigned development of virtue. shouldn't trying to develop a particular virtue be a personal choice, not something you are told to do for a grade? i know personally, the minute i'm told i have to do something in a particular way with certain time restraints, it automatically decreases my desire to do it.

and can you truly isolate a single virtue and improve that in your life? i'm not so sure. because i think the virtues are so intertwined that you can't just pull one away from the rest and say "i'm going to work on increasing this one virtue in my life." this is all based on some personal experiment that Ben Franklin did with a list of what he believed were the cardinal virtues and he worked to develop all of them in himself. But even he found that he forgot some in his list, one in particular that was most definitely related to all the rest - humility. i'm not saying its not in your powers to make yourself a better person - that is always an option - but i feel the minute you try and isolate an option, you see how many strings it really has attached to it.

i won't argue that this assignment hasn't made me think, although i can't speak for the rest of the class (where the minimal seems to be the best option). obviously my deemed virtue of development is forgiveness because i do tend to have a hard time with holding grudges for longer than necessary sometimes. we're supposed to deal with developing this on a day to day basis, but i don't always have issues with forgiveness daily, so its made it a little harder. but then i realized...maybe i'm looking at it the wrong way. it's not that i have to wait for the day when i get mad at someone and test myself on letting it go. it can be when i feel animosity about something that has happened in my past that i haven't been able to let go of. that's what i have a bigger problem with.

forgiveness is a hard concept. to define and to incorporate into your life. at least for me. the dictionary definition is along the lines of "stopping a feeling of resentment toward a person or thing," but we've all heard the saying, "it isn't as easy as just stopping." when somebody hurts you in a way that you never believed was possible and acts in ways that are not ever considered acceptable, how do you just stop being upset about it? i've told people that i've forgiven them for things when in all actuality i'm not really sure that i have.

so i've changed the goal of this assignment for myself. before i can work on developing forgiveness in myself, i must first understand what it means to forgive. once i learn the "what," i can then begin to learn the "how."

"Forgive all who have offended you, not for them, but for yourself."

-Harriet Nelson

something that drives me crazy

i almost called this post "something i dislike," but then i realized i don't actually have anything against this particular thing...it just makes me a little crazy (or more so than usual).

i have something i need to say and desperately want to say. but i haven't quite yet figured out how to say it. it's just so complicated and so strange and not entirely sensical. but it's there and i feel it and i'm not sure what to do with it now that i've acknowledged it. this sort of middle ground, the phase before i'm able to actually express what my heart is feeling, is what confuses me to no end. this thought just sits in my brain and invades and pushes forward anytime it feels even slightly ignored, feisty and intrusive.

mostly, what i think this centers around is that i feel i have developed some...standards...for myself, for what i deserve and how i deserve to be treated, and in a nutshell, i feel that these standards (although i view as highly beneficial to myself) are going to make things more challenging for me. that's as much as i can spit out right now.

sigh. i'll get it eventually.