we have to enjoy it

I. Need. This. Print.
The Ballerina Project is simply amazing. I told Ed today that when we have our own house, I will have a ballerina room and buy tons of these prints to absolutely cover every inch of all four walls. I kind of feel like this girl right now. Like I'm trying to relax, but waiting for a storm. I don't know what my storm is, but I can feel it coming on. I'm trying to lay low and just stay calm before my life starts (or should I say continues) to get a little crazy. Grad school, and then a career, babies, then teenagers, and just like that I'll be old and wrinkly with alzheimers or cancer. I'll be asking my kids how old I am and wishing I could just be young again, like 21. HA! So why am I thinking so far ahead when I actually am 21? I shouldn't be.

It's just so crazy that life never stops. You may chill for a few hours watching tv, but you're still getting older, still wasting time sitting at work, but hopefully you're enjoying it.

We have to enjoy it.

If we don't, then what are we here for? You may know already that I absolutely love existentialism, so maybe that's where this is coming from. I need to live what I preach, though. I need to enjoy my life, even when it feels like there is nothing to be enjoyed. I need to create meaning with what I do with my time. I loved what one of my teachers said in my personality class last fall. He was talking about living a meaningful life and said, "Please don't leave when I say this, but why are you all sitting in this class right now? It's Monday night and only one hour into our two and a half hour class. Does it really mean anything to you? If you died tomorrow would you be glad you had come to class?" We all laughed and joked about leaving, but when you think about things like that, it really makes you appreciate what you have. I found myself thinking about how lucky I was to be in college at BYU and loving my major instead of thinking about how many more minutes I had to sit there and be still.

My sister came home from Africa and let me tell you, she's a different person. In a good way, but the main thing I have taken from what I have talked about with her is how happy the people of Africa are, even though in our eyes, many of their lives are filled with suffering and death. They appreciate everything they have. And here I am living the wonderful life of an American and always wishing for more. I don't want to get going about how selfish Americans are and how saintly everyone in a 3rd world country is because I really don't think that's the case. I think we're all great in our own way and we all deserve to be happy or at least content.

Content. That sounds so depressing, I know. But realistically, there are so many people out there who are depressed or sad or below the classification of content that if everyone were at least just okay with their lives, the world would be so much happier. I'm just writing very "stream of consciousness-ly" but hopefully I can wrap this back around to my original message to myself and to whoever is reading (but mostly to myself) that whatever our life may be, we have to enjoy it. And that's all, I really have nothing more to say. I really feel like if we can do that, everything else with fall into place and we can be allowed to be happy. So many people just don't allow themselves to be happy and therefore they aren't.

It's a sad world sometimes. But it's more happy than sad really, we just have to find the happy.