1st off, I would like to start off by wishing anyone who may be reading this a Happy New Year. I have spent my new years eve sleeping late, eating taco bell, and watching the Hallmark channel....then it was off to work to ring in the new year while making double time! It's all good though, after all, I didn't have anything better to do. I guess I would rather be at work making double time than sitting at home alone on the holiday. Yeah...much better. I will have to say though, that this has to the 1st New Year's Eve that I have spent at work. I usually take it off....but then again, I usually have someone to spend it with and somewhere to be. Not this time.
The movies I watched tonight were the 2nd and 3rd movies in the 3 part series of "Sarah: Plain and Tall". I remember I watched and liked the 1st one, and so I was interested to see the other 2 parts in the series. I am glad I watched them. They are good movies, if you like that sort of thing. I will try not to get too deep into the story, and attempt to just tell you the basics. The story is set in a time right around when the 1st cars were coming out. A man and his 2 children lived on a farm in Kansas. The mother had died and the man felt the children needed a mother. So he put an ad in the paper to find a kind women to come and marry him and be his children's mother. The lady who found the ad was living in Maine. She was probably considered an old maid. She might have been in her 40s living in a house with her 3 single aunts. She took a chance and left her home to be married to a stranger in Kansas and take care of the 2 children. Well the story ends up that the man and women fall in love and they make quite a loving family in Kansas. Of course many events befall them, but you will just have to watch the movies to see for yourself. The reason for me giving a little background info about the movie is b/c it inspired the title of this entry tonight. You see in the movie, the 3 aunts who lived with the lady in Maine were lovingly referred to as the "Unclaimed Treasures". That phrase and the meaning behind it just resonated with me deeply. They were being called the "Unclaimed Treasures" b/c they were loving, kind, sweet, creative, and interesting older women who had never found a life long partner and never had children of their own. I found the phrase quiet beautiful b/c it was acknowledging the fact that the women were indeed treasures that no man had claimed. I found I had been feeling like that for awhile now and that is a great way to describe anyone who is still "unclaimed". We are all treasures in our own right, and being unclaimed or alone in no way negates our value or tarnishes our worth. In the story, the women were perfectly happy in their lives without a man, and I'm not trying to say that all women should have a man, but my point is more for the people out there who are alone and may be feeling somewhat diminished b/c of it. You and I are beautiful...even though we may be "unclaimed" by anyone.
Let me address what I see the meaning of "claimed" to be here. I for example have had a few relationships in my time, and I feel that none of those men ever truly "claimed" me. Yes, they wanted ownership of some parts of me, but none of them truly committed to our lives completely. In my experience they were always lacking conviction. When push came to shove, they would not do what it takes to hold on to me...to keep the life we were building going, or to make sacrifices to sustain us. It was always good while until they had to give something up or work hard. I see being truly "claimed" as someone putting themselves on the line for you...saying with conviction that they will do what it takes to make it work no matter what. In that way, a man shows you what he thinks you are worth. And so, for my life...I have not yet found that man yet who knows my true worth
My hope is that everyone out there who feels lonely and who feels they have a lot to give to another person, finally finds a person who will see them as a treasure and who will hold on tightly with conviction and determination.
I wish you all new and great beginnings as we enter in to this new year.
Good night.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Within the Bowels of Insomnia...
Here I lay in my dark bedroom...tossing...turning. Uh oh...insomnia again. *sigh* Despite all my efforts and tricks, sleep escapes me. The room is pitch black except for the stars dotting my ceiling and walls from the night light I love so much. Next to me, I have my thunderstorm meditation music playing softly in the background, while my beloved fan blows cool air my way. Oh and let's not forget my queen size bed, down comforter, velvet blanket, foam pillows, and body pillow, all dusted with lavender oil. The perfect sleeping environment! And usually this works just fine. I've had to get this elaborate b/c I am a night shifter who works in a group home for the severely mentally ill. This is my 5th or 6th year on night shift now and it's getting harder to tolerate physically. This is actually my day off and I had planned to sleep at night, but alas, no such luck. Blame it on an overactive mind...a restlessness...a general lack of contentment with my life.
I don't have a unique story necessarily, but one I probably share with a lot of people out there...my life did not turn out the way I would have liked thus far. And so...enter my discontentedness. Actually contentment is something that I am recently trying to concentrate on. Why is it that I am not content in my life? What has caused this? How can I change this?
I have recently come to realize that contentment is really a choice. When you start asking yourself those questions listed above, you see your answers tell you that you have basically decided to be unhappy. When you answer those questions above, you find that you have created the very circumstances you will be unhappy with until......well, until you get your way essentially.
You see, once you have decided that you are unhappy with your life and dissatisfied, you have only one general answer to the question of why....it's b/c you haven't gotten your way. Or rather, your life is not going as you thought it should, or as you would like it to be. And it's because at some point in your life...you have made up your mind on a set of values and circumstances that you decided were equal to what you deem as happiness or contentedness and anything deviating too far from that would equal disaster.
Well, disaster it was for me then. There's no way I could have foreseen my life as it has turned out thus far. And I'm beginning to see, that in all likelihood, it will probably continue that way...unpredictable.
So, where do you go from here? Well, I guess you have to simply realign your thinking. "Oh! Is that all?" Yeah, not so simple and yet....pretty simple. It's not so simple as just changing your mind, it's changing how you view life, how you judge things, what your definition of happiness is, your expectations....your ability to ride the wave of life; Or as the song goes..."Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?, Can I handle the seasons of my life?" And yet...it is as simple as just making those decisions...seeing the error in the previous line of thinking and changing it to fit the new premise. Premise being: To abolish your happiness qualifiers b/c they are worthless, and to decide to retain a measure of contentment within every situation b/c you have learned to be thankful for something...anything at all in any situation. That last part was key to the whole thing. If you think about it...you cannot be unhappy while your being thankful...you cannot be miserable or anxious when you are being thankful. And I'm no expert, but if I'm not mistaken, by changing your thoughts to primarily being thankful instead of focusing on how "wrong" things are, you can actually retrain your brain to think more often upon those lines than of the previous. More simply, if you practice, it will become a habit that will take less and less effort over time.
So what have we learned today class? (Me included) Give up your silly notions of life and what it holds for you and embrace all that is given to you, no matter how small... with gladness, thankfulness, and a wonder of the amazing gift of life. After all...we are all here 1 day and gone the next. No one knows for how long. We waste time on misery when there is no need.
Thanks for reading...Good night all.
I don't have a unique story necessarily, but one I probably share with a lot of people out there...my life did not turn out the way I would have liked thus far. And so...enter my discontentedness. Actually contentment is something that I am recently trying to concentrate on. Why is it that I am not content in my life? What has caused this? How can I change this?
I have recently come to realize that contentment is really a choice. When you start asking yourself those questions listed above, you see your answers tell you that you have basically decided to be unhappy. When you answer those questions above, you find that you have created the very circumstances you will be unhappy with until......well, until you get your way essentially.
You see, once you have decided that you are unhappy with your life and dissatisfied, you have only one general answer to the question of why....it's b/c you haven't gotten your way. Or rather, your life is not going as you thought it should, or as you would like it to be. And it's because at some point in your life...you have made up your mind on a set of values and circumstances that you decided were equal to what you deem as happiness or contentedness and anything deviating too far from that would equal disaster.
Well, disaster it was for me then. There's no way I could have foreseen my life as it has turned out thus far. And I'm beginning to see, that in all likelihood, it will probably continue that way...unpredictable.
So, where do you go from here? Well, I guess you have to simply realign your thinking. "Oh! Is that all?" Yeah, not so simple and yet....pretty simple. It's not so simple as just changing your mind, it's changing how you view life, how you judge things, what your definition of happiness is, your expectations....your ability to ride the wave of life; Or as the song goes..."Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?, Can I handle the seasons of my life?" And yet...it is as simple as just making those decisions...seeing the error in the previous line of thinking and changing it to fit the new premise. Premise being: To abolish your happiness qualifiers b/c they are worthless, and to decide to retain a measure of contentment within every situation b/c you have learned to be thankful for something...anything at all in any situation. That last part was key to the whole thing. If you think about it...you cannot be unhappy while your being thankful...you cannot be miserable or anxious when you are being thankful. And I'm no expert, but if I'm not mistaken, by changing your thoughts to primarily being thankful instead of focusing on how "wrong" things are, you can actually retrain your brain to think more often upon those lines than of the previous. More simply, if you practice, it will become a habit that will take less and less effort over time.
So what have we learned today class? (Me included) Give up your silly notions of life and what it holds for you and embrace all that is given to you, no matter how small... with gladness, thankfulness, and a wonder of the amazing gift of life. After all...we are all here 1 day and gone the next. No one knows for how long. We waste time on misery when there is no need.
Thanks for reading...Good night all.
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