Tuesday, July 10, 2012

568 days, 218 rooms: Part 2

1. All I Want is You. When I read this today, I could put myself in the place I was in when I first wrote it. I've always seemed to struggle with the afterlife, and the uncertainty of what happens, and even my growing belief that this is all there is. Stonehill has made me a lot more spiritual than I ever have been, and I've thought about spirituality/religion way more in the past two years than I ever have. To see all of that come out into one post, I know that I put everything I was feeling out there. Especially when I explicitly say so at the end.

2. Values Game #6. I have a huge soft spot for awesome quotes, because to me, they really do give such a sense of what life is. I love that in this post, I talk about the Jean-Paul Sartre quote that I'm pretty sure I'm obsessed with, and my meaning of life post. Two things that have come up multiple times in my blog. The deep breath, too. Anytime I take a deep breath or something after a blog post, I can feel myself giving everything I can to the words. I can feel the essence of the post and how much it means to me.

3. The Journey. Get me talking about this poem, and you'll see why it's on this list. It means so much to me because of the message it sends - all we can do is fend for ourselves. Yes, there will be plenty of people that will care about us, and plenty of people we'll care for, but in the end, the only thing we can do is save ourselves. Stars burning through the sheets of clouds is one of the many examples I could use to describe being in a moment. You feel like you are a star burning through the sheets of clouds. It's an incredible feeling.

4. Stonehill "problems". One post does not adequately describe how much I absolutely love Stonehill. Ten posts probably don't do it justice. You literally need to be around me during the Stonehill/Bentley home game, or Orientation, or Relay for Life, or out on the quad, or scooting around on campus...Stonehill has been nothing but good to me, and I'm doing whatever I can to give back. I don't think there's anything better to do at Stonehill than to show everyone else how much you love it. It explains me being a Peer Mentor, Student Ambassador, sports broadcaster, Math Lab tutor...being a part of as much as I can at Stonehill is not only what makes me love this place so much, but what makes me want to show everyone else how amazing this place really is.

5. High school Tardiff. As I wrote this, and as I read it, I could feel how real everything was. As I read earlier today, I could point to the exact spots where I knew I was being 100% real with everything I was saying. I love being consciously aware of the eventual termination of our lives. Sure, sometimes it scares the hell out of me, but when it doesn't, it makes me a better person. Thinking about that gives me the opportunity to know that what happens to us is real. Everything is real, which is a theme of some of my posts. This post is one of the best examples of me being in the moment, knowing that life is real and everything that happens between the start and the end of it is real.

6. One Summer, Many Rooms. The reason I love this particular end-of-a-Stonehill-year post is the same reason as I love the post I just mentioned - I can point to the end and know that in that moment, what I was feeling was real. After I finished that final post, I sat and took in the world around me, feeling incredibly alive. Like I said, knowing that this life ends eventually is what brings it so much meaning. It means you have to truly live in the moment, and in that moment, I know that I was doing just that.

7. The meaning of life. I love my other end-of-a-Stonehill-year post because, despite the depth and sincerity to it, it feels quiet. I remember as I typed it that I was going slowly, but for no particular reason. It was just how I was operating as I wrote. Time seemed to slow down for those 23 minutes, and it was a different kind of moment that I was in. I felt like I had finished something that meant a lot to me, and similar to my sophomore end-of-a-Stonehill-year post, I just kind of sat there for a while. Reading this post again, I feel connected to not only the person I was at the time, but the person I am now, and how I have changed.

8. Don't regret this life. Any post where I explicitly talk about living in a moment and letting music take over that moment has to make the list. Albeit a short post, there's a lot I could say about the subject (see: this post). Music really is such a complement to moments in our lives, and not just during the climactic parts of movies. I'm sure you can think of a song that you would listen to given a certain situation. Reading this didn't do as much for me as actually thinking about music and its power of the moment.

9. What diversity means to me. I don't love this because it's some mega-profound epiphany. It's something that I've believed for a while, has been reaffirmed while at Stonehill, and will stay with me for a while. I thoroughly enjoy going off on certain subjects, and this is one of them. I obviously wanted to blog about this right after I took that survey, which means that I actively sought out talking about this, instead of having it be something that just came to me. Any time that happens, I know I'll be very into it.

10. Straight in a straight line. To me, this post perfectly encapsulates the idea of life being real. When you acknowledge the infinite number of alternate paths your life could have taken, it makes you appreciate the one you're on that much more. To know that this is what's happening right now, in the moment. Yeah, you could have been in a different moment right now, but you're not. You have this moment right here. I love thinking about moments like that. I couldn't have gotten to this moment without everything in my life happening exactly the way it did. Including simple decisions like in what order I go about my day. Who knows how different this post would have been if I wrote it around 6:30 p.m. instead of right now. No one will ever know, because this moment is now. The moment is now.

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