Laundry Night

Last night, after a workout so brutal the gym owners walked around wiping sweat off the floors while people dripped from their pushup positions, I took a pealed orange, a fresh copy of The Hobbit (a first time read), and a huge bundle of clothes to the local laundry mat. Being able to do four loads of laundry in under two hours is quickly becoming my new favorite thing. I like the quiet time to read, and if that ever gets old, I look out of the huge frosted windows at the people walking around.

Few people who come to the laundry mat know each other, but quick relationships are formed in sharing quarters, borrowing dryer sheets, and like last night, working on the broken change exchange machine. I laughed with strangers as we pooled together our money so that a designated runner could go to another laundry mat to get us all quarters; we laughed again when someone new walked into use our change machine and it began to miraculously work. The four of us—an old woman in pink sweatpants, a young Asian student, a recently immigrated Kenyan, and myself—stood around the folding tables talking about the weather in Utah, the culture and the religion, and how hard it is to go to school and work at the same time. Outside of the laundry mat, I would never have told my life stories to these people, nor heard theirs. Still, for a night, we enjoyed our unexpected conversations with the hum of the dryers as background music.

The truth is, every day when we walk out our doors, we have an opportunity to experience something new if we want to. They may not be the experiences we were hoping to have—in fact, they may be nothing short of weird. But I am starting to believe that the weird and the unexpected add the most color to life.

Another Year Older

It's true, I don't do this for everyone's birthday (on purpose actually, as I deliberately don't set my own bar too high), but I couldn't resist celebrating a big, big birthday this week. As of Wednesday, my larger than life Dad is 75. And instead of bringing in his birthday at home with a ski day at Snowbasin and a fancy meal fixed by my mother, he is almost exactly halfway around the world surrounded by vanilla beans, mangos, and geckos he occasionally vacuums up. For him, I am going to share three memories.

Memory une. When my Dad had back problems years ago, he would walk up and down our street because it made him feel better to be in motion (imagine that). I still remember the way his loose Chaco sandals sounded as they scuffed on the pavement. I don't remember any particular conversations, only his invitations that I walk with him anytime I was home.

Memory deux. My Dad still sports a Velcro headband with a Hawaiian print when he works in the yard. And the widest, old school brown belt you'll ever see. He mows the lawn like someone is holding a fire torch to his heels. And he used to throw his awful socks in my face when he was done.

Memory trois. I remember my Dad coming to check me out of school early when I was in high school. He was wearing a checkered, light pink dress shirt with a beautiful tie and slacks. Even at 16 years old, I knew that he was sharp dresser. And I felt proud.

Here's to another 25 years of that great headband, Padre.

Power of Presence

In the past week, three very sad things have happened to people I know. And while hearing about trials is not at all the same as living through them, those of us bystanders feel their ache and are left wondering what to do, how to reach out, and when to simply let things breathe.

In thinking about this the last few days, my mind keeps recycling back to an essay I read from "This I Believe," a collection of personal papers gathered by NPR in the 1960s and 2000s. In one essay titled "The Power of Presence," a woman wrote about hearing that her good friend's mother had died and her conflict in not wanting to intrude on her friend's grief while also not wanting to leaving her alone with it. Someone finally told the woman to go to the hospital, to just be there with her friend. Since that moment, the woman wrote, "I have not hesitated to be in the presence of others for whom I could 'do' nothing. 'Being with' another person carries with it a silent power. [I am] repeatedly struck by the healing power of connection created by being fully there in the quiet understanding of another. In it, none of us are truly alone."

However much we'd like, sometimes there is nothing we can do for someone who is hurting; we can only be. We cannot remove their deep ache or real fears; we can only bear those feelings alongside them, as a silent but fully present companion.

So here is to our efforts to help those we love—not by removing what they feel, but by standing by them while they feel it.

I Hope

As I am sure most of us are, I am still gathering my thoughts for the new year. Most everyone I speak to has this tangible, yet unexplainable feeling that 2013 will bring great things, like we can almost taste it in the air. Some people I know will be having babies; some want their businesses to thrive; some want to make more of a difference where they're serving; some want to finish the year in love, to bring in 2014 by someone's side.  

 

I too feel hopeful for the coming year. Maybe some things will change; maybe nothing will change; maybe some tough times are ahead. But taking the words from my favorite story, "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies." So maybe the best thing we can take into the new year, whether the wishes we squeeze tight in our chests come true or not, is sustained hope. Hope for happiness; hope for goodness to come to the people we love; hope that the things we want most in our lives will be closer to our attainment or, in their continued absence, that we will feel peace. And most importantly, hope that we'll take every opportunity, ride every roller coaster twice, so that we can look back 12 months from now and know we did our best. Or, even more, that we lived our best.

 

"I find I am so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain...I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams...

....I hope."

Our Palms

As I sit to write this, my topic in mind, I think of the line from Romeo and Juliet that says, "For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss." The palm of the hand is a fascinating spot—however flat or rough or small it seems—and carries with it immense meaning, despite its size. Being palm to palm with someone you like, or love, makes you feel like you're plugged into an electrical outlet; the palm is used in handshakes to show our strength and trust; it is also used as the most universal gesture of need, as someone reaches out their hand in hopes we'll put something in it.

In yoga last night, my instructor asked us to do many things that required our "palms to face upward." His words created a dimple in my mind, and I mulled over the idea as I transitioned from pose to pose. An open palm; an upward facing hand. I asked myself whether or not my hand facing down instead would really compromise the move and make it incorrect, and decided that no, neither direction really affected how I held my posture. And yet, if you believe yoga is as much for the mind as it is for the body, then perhaps the open palm is the pose for the brain just as warrior one is a pose for the legs. Perhaps it signifies, to yourself and to others, that you are more apt to receive than to decline. By keeping our palms facing up instead of down, we are telling our brain and our body that we are ready to accept, and connect with, others.

So, yes, maybe this is a grand idea taken from a simple gesture. But maybe this one simple gesture makes a big difference in what experiences find their way into our hands.

 

Bedazzled

It is true that Christmas really does feel so different from any other time of year. The biggest explanation is the spirit behind it, with the birth of the Savior giving meaning to all of our celebrations. Apart from that though (without at all minimizing it), I often wonder why it is my fingers tingle when I decorate my Christmas tree and why I keep it lit so much it's a crisp cracker halfway through the month, or why I keep a candle burning 24 hours a day just to inhale the glow, or why giving gifts to others makes me so happy I almost burst and tell them weeks early. And it's not only me. Everyone, everywhere, becomes more sentimental, more romantic, and more spiritual without feeling the need to excuse themselves.

One answer to these wonderments is this: Christmas does such a number on us simply because we decide to let it. The warmth and frenzy that overpowers us during the holidays is completely by choice (though anyone who secretly loves Justin Bieber's holiday album would have you believe otherwise). And if that's true, and so much of it is by decision, then I can feel this happy all year long by putting the same enthusiasm and excitement into my everyday life, into the more ordinary of months. I can take the holiday philosophy of embracing the moment, despite all other circumstances, with all of the positive energy and bedazzlement I can muster.

Some unknown person said, "I fall in love with people's passion, the way their eyes light up when they talk about the things they love." So here's to having Christmas passion for life for the whole of the coming year.

Abundance

When we got back from our study abroad in college, my friend Danny gave me a copy of the The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. For those who've read it, you know that each verse is enlightened, earthy, and simple in its expression. In one place, he writes, "You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance." In light of the week, and the many things that I lately ask for, I am acknowledging my abundance today.

1. I am grateful that there are people in my life who make me laugh so hard my upper lip starts to sweat.

2. I am grateful to have been loved, a couple of times, and for the way it has carved me.

3. I am grateful for a healthy body that responds when I push it and even thanks me for having asked something of it.

4. I am grateful for caramel popcorn, oreos dipped in milk, and pistachio gelato, and the moments when I can enjoy them without thinking twice.

5. I am grateful that the world is diverse and stunning in its variety, and for any chance I've had to visit parts of it.

6. I am grateful for my memory, which catalogues everything from pointless movie lines to the crisp details of moments I never want to forget.

7. I am grateful that I always have someone to call when I need to cry.

8. I am grateful for the conversations my siblings have when we sit together after dinner and that, at the end of the day, we prefer each other's company above anyone else.

9. I am grateful for things that smell good: perfume from Passion Flower, men that pass me on their bikes wearing cologne, and the candles my sister makes.

10. I am grateful that life isn't without meaning; that it all fits together in the end because Someone has specially designed it that way.

Happy Thanksgiving.