Lucky you

"You coulda made a safer bet
but what you break is what you get
you wake up in the bed you make
I think you made a big mistake."
- "Lucky You"
The National

Sadly, admittedly, my favorite TV show is "One Tree Hill". This could be for a number of reasons - one, I watch very little television. Two, I am notorious for getting sucked into insidious teen dramas. Three, there is always amazing music on this show. Four, they start and/or end the show with literary quotes, which I am a total geek for loving.

The quote on my page today is from an episode way back one - probably season one - really insignificant to my point, either way.

T.H. White said: Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically to those who hardly think about us in return.

In the episode prior to that, there is a great dialogue exchange. One character questions, "How did we get so broken?" And the other replies, "We fell in love, and at some point, the people we love forgot to love us back."

(No, I don't remember this all offhand, it is catalogued online) :)

Why is it that the people we try the hardest for, the ones we give our hearts to without even thinking are generally the ones who don't stop to recognize this?

And in some cases, it's (thankfully) not even our hearts - it is our efforts, our time, our confidence and our souls. The intangibles in life.

Either way, it's sad and it sucks.

Wondering...

What the fuck am I thinking?

I have a total need to escape reality lately.

Thinking that things that bother me will go away if I don't think about them

The easiest place to go is always the one place I don't belong

And I know better

Reality resonates but doesn't click

Some things in life aren't worth fighting for

Some things should come easier

Some things should be more fun

Every once in awhile, someone should meet your expectations.

Other Side of the World

"The fire fades away
Most of everyday
Is full of tired excuses
But it's to hard to say
I wish it were simple
But we give up easily
You're close enough to see that
You're the other side of the world to me"
- "Other Side of the World"
KT Tunstall

I know life isn't supposed to be easy. I understand the whole concept of "for there to be compassion, there has to be suffering"; I also get that life's rewards are more meaningful when they come after effort and difficulty. I recognize, most of all, that we are responsible for our own decisions.

Some days I think that the world is a decent place - that people are basically good, and that it all seems worthwhile. These are the days that I find hope in the unknown, believing that something amazing can and will happen.

Other days, I find are full of tired excuses. Things don't change, people aren't what you hope or expect they can be. Life feels worn.

It's not necessarily that anything has changed - some days just feel better than others. It's so simple to give up - to believe that you will never have the future you dreamed of, never find the love you deserve, never accomplish all that you hoped to.

Why is it so much easier to put that fire out, than to try to keep it kindling?

"But you are what you love
And not what loves you back
So I guess that's why you keep calling me back
I'm fraudulent, a thief at best
A coward who paints a bullshit canvas
Things that will never happen to me
But at arms length, it's Tim who said I'm good at it, I've mastered it
Avoiding, avoiding everything"
- "You Are What You Love"
Jenny Lewis

Think Again

"Think again
Don't give in
This isn't what you want "
- "Think Again"
Teddy Thompson

The people who I admire most are the ones who know who they are and what they stand for. They are the people who know what they believe in, what they want out of life, and what they deserve. They are the people who do not compromise themselves out of weakness or to fit a particular situation.

Most of us know what we want from life - from our jobs, our friends, and our relationships. Yet it's so easy to find yourself involved in something that is in direct conflict with what you know, deep down inside, you believe in.

We all know (in theory) what we stand for. It's so easy to tell someone what you believe it, what's important to you. Yet it's equally as easy, if not easier, to sacrifice that.
It seems like life is okay when it's fun and things are "going well". But one hard look at reality paints a different picture. It's fun because it's easy...and it doesn't match the person you truly are. Sometimes it's just easier to go along with it, than to think about who you really are, what you stand for, and what it all means.

I wish I wasn't that person, sometimes.

"This is your life, are you who you want to be
This is your life, are you who you want to be
This is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be
When the world was younger and you had everything to lose"
- "This is Your Life"
Switchfoot

The little things

Weekdays mornings when I walk to work, I'm generally not really happy. It could be that I'm not much of a morning person and I hate waking up at 5:25 each day. It could be that I hate the smell of Penn Station by the 1/9 subway, aptly described online as smelling of "Rotten sourdough bread and soured towels ... Rancid, biologicalish, garbagey ... Candy-store buttered popcorn ... Smell of a thousand rotting feet ... Ass ... Funky feet and Doritos ... Urine-soaked fish ... Fecal fiesta." (Sorry, I think that description is beyond fitting and should paint a fabulous mental picture for those of you who don't have the pleasure of sniffing Penn right after breakfast.)

Once I am finally outside, my sub-mile walk through Midtown to my office is cluttered with tourists stopping every ten seconds to take a photo on the street, people who like to type on their BlackBerrys while "walking", and an assortment of other people who don't "get" how to walk down a crowded sidewalk.

These little annoyances make it difficult to appreciate being in the City everyday. I hate winter; I hate the cold. I'm not a fan of the fact that people always seem angry in the City. But there is a part of me that will always love New York, having grown up here.

Today at about 10:00 a.m., in the midst of a perfectly clear blue sky (cold) day, one of my coworkers noted out the window that it was snowing. This was the first snow shower of the season, and we all gathered excitedly at the windows to watch. Although it was done no more than ten minutes later, I remembered that snow falling over Manhattan is a beautiful sight.

Another one of my coworkers walked to the side window, which no one ever looks out. It's buried perilously behind the copy machine, where no one dares to tread. He called me over there to point out something that none of us has ever really "noticed" - a magnificent head-on view of the Empire State Building.

These are the little things I fail to appreciate in my day-to-day life. These are the type of things I need to see the beauty in, when I get bogged down in the typical annoyances of working in the City.

"It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in." - "American Beauty"

The last kiss

On New Year's Eve, I watched "The Last Kiss", which recently came out on DVD. The movie, which stars Zach Braff and Rachel Bilson is basically about life, the inevitable quarterlife crisis, and why relationships don't survive.

In a nutshell - Zach Braff is a 29 year old architect, living with a girl who everyone thinks is perfect. He, at one point, found her perfect, too. He has made every excuse as to why they shouldn't marry yet, citing the unhappiness and breakdown of every married couple they know...including their parents. She finds out they are having a baby - he meets 20 year old Rachel Bilson, a local college student. While he should be looking at life from an adult perspective, he embarks on an affair with her, in an effort to escape the predictability that settling eventually brings.

I won't ruin the rest of the movie for you (after all, that's enough plot for you to rent it...), but when it was done, I felt cynical and sort of depressed. I'm not the only person who felt this way after seeing this film. Everyone agrees that they enjoyed it, but they also feel it's a reasonably accurate take on relationships and our perception of growing up and taking on responsibility.

Regardless...it was a bad choice for New Years Eve. While I was getting ready to go out and start 2007 with a fresh, optimistic outlook, I instead felt jaded and cynical. That this is reality. Maybe I am better off with the less realistic movies that paint a more positive (yet I repeat, unrealistic) portrait of life, love, and relationships.

Just the same, there was an amazing quote in the movie. When his girlfriend is talking to her mother, her mother comments "Life is pretty much in the grays. If you insist on black and white, you're going to be unhappy."

This is what I am trying this year - to stop insisting on black and white in life. I am making an effort to stop overanalyzing and looking for perfection, idealism, and sense in everything in my life. It seems the more you try to make everything fit a certain way, the less it actually does.
Maybe absolutes aren't the key to happiness, after all. Or is that simply settling?