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Love this world till it hurts by Leehi Yona
I have been having dreams about sleeping through my alarms lately. The dreams always end the same way – in them, I wake up startled, realizing what has happened, but by then it is already too late.
In my waking life, I hear alarms all the time. I study climate change. I am a budding scientist. I am a community organizer. I am a twenty-two year old who is all too aware of what greenhouse gases mean for my generation: we will be living the consequences of a problem so monumental, it will affect every aspect of our future. Most of my research has been in the Arctic. I remember the first time I saw glaciers calving in Greenland. It was 2AM. The sun was out – as it always was in summer – and low on the horizon. I was hiking with other research assistants, walking along treeless tundra. I could see for miles. Every step I took left a deep imprint in the grasses. I felt the weight of my feet – knowing the Arctic landscape, I was acutely aware that those footprints would last for years, at least. We perched on a mountain ridge and sat facing the ice sheet. We waited. And, then, it came – immense thunder in a cloudless sky. Then, a piercing crack. Before it could even register, five skyscrapers tore off and turned into icebergs. Never in my life have I felt more like a speck of dust. Most of us know all too well what climate change means for our generation. We are told by the most respected, serious, and intellectual people that we will have no future to live for unless society comes together as one common humanity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Then, we are told by decision makers, adults, this same society, that our youth renders us powerless. How can we live with the grief of knowing we have no lives to look forward to? Should we even consider bringing children into this world when we know the world is betraying their own right to live? Today, world leaders gathered in Paris to kick off the COP 21 United Nations climate talks – the biggest climate change conference of this decade. More Heads of State were in one place today than any other time in history. I sat with other young people in these same halls. We collectively held our breath as we watched Barack Obama, François Hollande, Vladimir Putin, and Justin Trudeau speak. “I believe, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that there is such a thing as being too late,” President Obama said. “And when it comes to climate change, that hour is almost upon us. But if we act here, if we act now, if we place our own short-term interests behind the air that our young people will breathe, and the food that they will eat, and the water that they will drink, and the hopes and dreams that sustain their lives, then we won’t be too late for them.” All the while, the United States is still a country deliberately undermining the U.N. climate process. We are young, and terrified. Our fear is rooted in the immense love we have for this world. My biggest fear in life is to see our world leaders act on climate change – to see our governments acknowledge what it means to be human and to feel the suffering of others, to show compassion – to cry happy tears, and then to wake up. We are all young and seeking meaning – we have barely established our own identities. How can we love ourselves, love each other, in such a broken world? How can we love this world if it is so broken? How can we hope when, as we speak, world leaders are holding hands as they walk into oblivion? They are negotiating our futures away. Love this world till it hurts. Foster an aching love for everything around us – clear skies, dandelions, untouched snow, sunshine, the feeling of bouncy grass against our bare soles. Find it within you to love this world in spite of its brokenness. Love it because it is broken. In the face of climate change, love is all we have left. There is hope at the heart of this all – we are young, but we know what the future can look like, and our love for the world pushes us to continue working on making it better. The alarm bells are ringing... |
“Because one believes in oneself, one doesn't try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn't need others' approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.”
― Lao Tzu “Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” ― Lao Tzu “If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with.” ― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz |
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If You Want Lasting Love, You Have To Reinvent What It Means First By. Bianca Sparacino
We reinvent love by giving it a blank slate; a new beginning, an experience that has the ability to thrive in ways our expectations can’t harm it.
We need to forget about the guidelines that have taught us what love is and how we attain it, how we keep it, how we grow it. Love is many different things, and people love in many different ways. The beauty of love is that it is as unique as a fingerprint – it will never be made the same way twice, it will never exist between two people the way it did before, so we cannot anchor it in comparisons, we must let it thrive without boundary. We reinvent love by giving it a voice, by breathing into it expression and communication. Love needs a celebration of the goodness we find in another human being, in the moments that make our chests pound with excitement and enjoyment. It needs vulnerability, softness, for we live in a world that wants to make love hard, and we allow it to when we withhold how we feel towards others, we allow it to when we let our fear of sensitivity rob our mouth of the words our heart wants to speak. Shout your love from rooftops – do not be scared to express how happy someone makes you feel, let them know that they give you goosebumps, let them know that you want to try again. Feel free within the wild beat that dances within you whenever you are with someone you adore, and let them know that they have created a song within you every chance you get. We reinvent love by freeing it from instant gratification; by understanding that love is something that takes time and patience, by coming to terms with the fact that being alone is much more productive than sleeping beside the convenient bones of someone who will end up making you feel lonely. It doesn’t matter how many times a day someone texts you, or if they grace you with a like on Instagram – do they take the time to be with you? To hear your problems, your fears, to share theirs with you? Do they take the time to be at your side when you need support, to lift you up when you deserve to be celebrated? It takes ten seconds to send an image, or a sentence, or a like on social media. It takes far much more effort to actually be present in someone’s life; we reinvent love by dedicating ourselves to that. We reinvent love by choosing it. Your ego isn’t going to make you breakfast in bed; your pride isn’t going to encourage you or wrap you in warm arms on the days you feel like giving up. Yes, things are going to be tough at times. The easy aspect of love is falling into it, but it takes courage to stay in love, it takes fearlessness to commit to love, for love is not easy. Love is chaos, it is a natural disaster that will live inside of you like a cyclone. But at the end of the day love is also the only peace you will ever know. Love is the destroyer, but it is also the inventor; it is the storm, but it is also the shelter, and this is why we must choose it every single morning, this is why we must fight for it and believe in it even on its hardest days... |
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Nothing Truly Beautiful Ever Asks For Attention By: Bianca Sparacino
Nothing truly beautiful ever asks for attention.
This quote has stuck with me ever since I heard my coworker speak the words. Nothing truly beautiful ever asks for attention – it just naturally exists, as it is, in confidence and boldness. Remember this the next time you chase someone you think you love. Remember this the next time you feel as if you need to compete for the attention of someone you admire. Generationally speaking, we often feel the need to prove ourselves to the heart we regard. We often feel the need to change ourselves to better suit their needs, we often wonder if we are exactly what they are looking for, or if they have other options. I have heard the sentiment many times over, I have seen it dissect beautiful moments and sensationalize less than beautiful relationships. Stop the “If onlys” and the “But maybes.” Trust me when I say that those do not exist within the boundaries of the love you want. They only exist within the reality of the love you chase. The most awe-inspiring person I ever had the privilege of loving planted his feet firmly in front of me and said “This is what I want.” There was courage, transparency. There was declaration. There was no insecurity, there was no need to compare myself to others or compete. The most awe-inspiring person I ever had the privilege of loving chose me every single day, and I chose him. When that wasn’t the case, we parted ways. We didn’t drag it out, we didn’t try to convince the other. We didn’t feel the need to grip, and chase something that did not fulfill us or inspire us. It was natural, and organic, and it allowed for me to feel deeply and confidently. That is the kind of love you want. Do not chase another human being. Instead, chase your curiosity. Chase your development and your goals. Chase your passion. Strive to work for something bigger than yourself, and instead of trying to convince someone that you fit within their world, strive to build your own. Relationships are not melting pots. They are unions. You walk into them with your own visions, your own hunger, and when you are confident in that, when you allow for that to thrive within you, you never break yourself down to appease the pursuit. You simply exist, as you are, and when you meet someone who does as well, when you meet someone who chooses you within that, you thrive together, and that creates a dynamic that is ever growing and influential. Nothing beautiful ever asks for attention. Let that be a testament. The truly carnal relationship, the attraction, the pull to another human being – it simply survives. It flourishes. It is the kind of beauty that lives within ribcages, that surges throughout bones, that you cannot explain, that allows you to “just know.” It is never bred from contest; it is never bred from uncertainty. You will never have to work to inspire it within someone, because it will simply exist within them. |
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Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free. ~ Rumi |
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I punish myself more than anybody else does if I am stupid about my actions, and I suffer, really suffer.
~Eartha Kitt |
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‘Bright Star’ by John Keats
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art– Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors– No–yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever–or else swoon to death. |
‘Love Sonnet 130’ by William Shakespeare
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask’d, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. |
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We Are Petrified of Genuine Love By Rachael Boley
There are many levels of love and each contains different layers
I have come to believe that if we are operating the way we were built to operate, there is a level of love we should feel for almost everyone we meet. I’m not saying we should fall head over heels in hopeless love, surrendering our whole selves to every soul on the street. But I am saying that if we are living in a state of openness and acceptance of both ourselves and others, functioning from a lens of compassion and connection, then we will likely experience a type of love birthed from compassion, empathy, and kindness, for almost everyone we meet. Believe it or not, that’s a good thing. The thing is we are scared of love. Petrified. In fact, not only are we afraid of love as a feeling, we are also afraid of love as a word. We are scared of everything that word represents. We are afraid of vulnerability, of openness, of allowing others into ourselves and of diving into others. Why? Because it costs us something to love that way. To live that way. The cost of genuine love Investing in other people in a genuine way costs us small pieces of ourselves. It requires something of us on a deeper level and most of the time, that is not a place people are comfortable living. Relationships – genuine relationships – beg us to crack our hearts open, even if it’s just a little bit. We are so desperate to connect with one another and to crawl out from behind the walls of isolation we’ve built; yet when faced with the opportunity, we hide from it. We keep each other at arms length most of the time. And, even in those relationships where we’ve reached a level beyond the surface, there’s a blockage we often hit because we only allow each other so deep. Tuning into our own hearts If we’re being honest, most of us aren’t even that good at tuning into our own hearts, much less anyone else’s. We tell ourselves a myriad of excuses for why we live this way, and while many of them are valid, they aren’t that convincing to me. "I’m busy. I’m tired. I don’t have time. I’ve got too much of my own stuff going on. We don’t know each other well enough. They don’t care anyway." We use these excuses — among others — to keep a safe distance between ourselves and everyone else. It works. Emotionally, it does seem safer to just worry about your own circle and not get too involved in anyone else’s. But is that really the safe route? Sure, it stops us from being hurt by others. But does it really? Do we not often feel hurt by someone else’s lack of investment in us, yet forget that we never actually invested in them either? Do we not feel lonely and alone, yet neglect to reach out from behind the walls of protection we’ve built? Craving Intimacy It seems to me that we are desperate for each other. Craving intimacy with other souls existing near us, yet we are so afraid of feeling anything that we don’t even give ourselves the chance. In my opinion, the only way to truly connect with anyone is to open yourself up to the possibility. We have to first open our minds and allow ourselves to be vulnerable and exposed long enough to invite someone else to come along and enter into that space with us. If not, we will just continue playing emotional bumper cars with each other and never actually get anywhere. We’ve become so accustomed to operating in our own bubbles, keeping everyone else on the periphery, that when we do encounter someone who has the capacity to slip inside our borders just a bit, we often shut it down. We question their authenticity. We are skeptical of their motives. And we allow our own insecurities, fears, and past hurts to overpower the potential for a genuine connection of any kind. That’s such a cheerless way to live. We’ve lost it. Trying to develop bona-fide relationships and even truly trying to get to know someone now comes across as something too intense. We label those people crazy. Needy. Desperate. Weird. And we distance ourselves from them. Particularly in the dating scene this theme exists. People mistake kindness for desire. I was recently told, “I think you’re in marriage mode and you just need to be in date mode.” While it’s true that my brain is more wired for long term commitment, I was simply trying to get to know the person. But people are so uncomfortable with below the surface communication that it apparently makes them feel like you want to marry them rather than get to know them. I’ve also had genuine friendships with people in which it’s clear there’s a level of mutual love for each other; yet, when even the thought of the “L” word presents itself, it’s shut down in a New York minute. There is no loss We think that saying we love someone means something it isn’t allowed to mean. That if we give a genuine piece of ourselves, maybe we won’t ever get it back. But isn’t that the point of relationships? To give and receive levels of affection we simply cannot create alone? Operating from that principle, we don’t lose anything by giving of ourselves. In fact, we have everything to gain. Yet living in this protective bubble of fear and resistance, we are creating the exact thing we dread: We are creating a world of solitude and disconnection where we watch each other from behind our glass walls but never really reach each other. The fact is that loving others brings to the surface our own mortality. It reminds us that we could lose things. That we aren’t invincible and that our hearts really do beat and bleed. That’s painful. Regardless of what level your heart operates in connection to certain people, we have to stop being afraid of love. In order to not fear love, we have to first not fear our own hearts. We have to first learn to trust ourselves and crack the window to our own souls before it will ever feel safe to let someone else in. Until we figure out that piece, I don’t think we will ever get the kind of love and fulfillment in relationships (of any kind) we truly desire... |
If every woman who's had an abortion took tomorrow off in protest, America would grind to a halt. And that would be symbolic: because women grind to a halt if they are not in control of their fertility.
Caitlin Moran |
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You are not for everyone by Bianca Sparacino
You are not for everyone. There are poems within you that people will not be able to handle, storms surging through your bones that young men and women will never be able to weather.
See, you have a love inside of you that will ooze from your very veins like honey on a hot day and you will never be able to stop it. You’re going to fall deeply in love with the wrong world – the kind of world young girls dream of, the kind of world where people say how they feel and love whom they love. You will forever be attached to the deep parts of those you tangle yourself within, though they will never get their hands dirty long enough to uncover the treasure that hums within your dancing pulse. You are going to be misunderstood in the way you care, for you will love people not for what is obvious within them, but for what is hidden beneath their masks. You are not going to revel in their freckles, you will not compliment the hues within their eyes. You are going to live for the way they breathe in the cold December air, watching as their chest rises and falls like your very heartbeat. You are going to live for the way their pupils dilate when they talk about something they are truly passionate about, when their cheeks flush from a compliment or the unexpected brush of your foot against their leg. No, you are not for everyone. You are never going to be able to stop yourself from screaming your love from rooftops, you will never be able to play it cool. You are the kind of person who will worry about the strangers you see in grocery stores, the kind of person who will stay up at night wondering about your fifth grade crush, hoping that the sun is setting beautifully wherever they rest their head. For that, I hope you protect yourself. I hope that you do not let the world condemn you for being too loud, too expressive, too soft; that you do not let it convince you to be perfect instead of real. I truly hope that you celebrate the fact that you are not for everyone, that you are not impressing the kinds of people who were built on the foundations of a sad world. If there is anything you do, please, let yourself rejoice in the fact that you do not fit in, that you think differently, because there is a chaos that laughs inside of you and it is going to change lives. It is going to make even the cynics believe again. It is going to grow love from thorn and glass. |
Happy Birthday Ms. Key
Education can give you a skill, but a liberal education can give you dignity.
-Ellen Key (12/11/1849 - 4/25/1926) |
"You feel the need to see clearly. But your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Without, everything seems discordant; only within does it coalesce into unity. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes."
Carl Jung, Letters, I, page 33, 22 October 1916 |
I have come to drag you out of yourself and take you in my heart. I have come to bring out the beauty you never knew you had and lift you like a prayer to the sky. ~ Rumi |
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