Breakfast at Tiffany's

You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness." You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.



empathy

"Empathy is about acknowledging that we are all separate, but also interconnected."

"One of my students, a waitress, has told me how impossible some of her customers can be. She described one customer, a very well dressed business woman who would come to her restaurant for lunch almost every day. she usually dined alone, reading business reports and annoying ohers by chatting loudly on a cell phone. Everyone in the restaurant called her "Mrs. Cranky," because the woman was always returning food, complaining that a draft was blowing on her, and often seemed to take it personally if the restaurant had run out of a particular item. She htought nothing of berating the waitress for things that were clearly not her fault. My student dreaded waiting on her, but the woman kept coming back. 

One day Mrs. Cranky came to the restaurant, accompanied by an ancient woman in a wheelchair who was obviously her mother. On that particular day, the persnickety customer was very quiet. All her usual complaining behavior was being taken over by her even more persnikty mother. the mother was more impossible than the daughter had ever been, and berated the entire wait staff. Her own daughter seemed to becomel ike a shy, insecure five year old, completely powerless to stand up for herself. She hunched over in her chair, almost as though she were cowering from someone who was about to hit her. 

the student saw all thsi, and began to have empathy for Mrs. Cranky. Seeing how she had been treated all her life made it obvious why she felt the need to treat others so abusviely. She decided that she would commit to ending the cycle of abuse. From that day forward, she treated this annoying customer of hers with love, kindness, and understanding. 

the ending of the story is not waht you would expect. The customer did not soften under the constant barrage of kindness that emanated from the student. Instead, she seemed distrustful and annoyed. It as almost as if she felt htat the kindness hse was reeiving was a trick. Mrs. Cranky was putting out hostility and by God, She expected hostility to come right back. That is how she had been raised. As unpleasent a life as it was, it was clearly the only way of being she could understand.

Eventually, Mrs. Cranky stopped coming to the restaurant altogether. The student says that although the customer didn't respond to her kindness, she herself got an enormous benefit from altering her behavior. She said, "I just felt lighter. I have always dreaded waiting on that customer, and suddenly i found myself looking forward to it. It made me feel so good about myself that it didn't really matter what the response was. I didn't care if she liked me. I liked me" that was the real gift that came from putting compassion into action. 

the waitress saw another human being as the frightened and confused child she once was. When you find yourself reacting to someone's behavior, the first hting you can do is to imagine that person as  a seven-year old. the man waving his fists at you in traffic is really nothing more than a little boy whose father doesn't have time for him anymore. The rude clerk at the DMV is really nothing more than an ashamed little girl who's been told over and over again that she is ugly and stupid. If you the time to see the hurt and sorrow, it becomes easier to have compassion and move on with the rest of your day."

- Gurmukh { 8 Human Talents}

" to live without compassion is to take on a physical burden. Poison seeps into every cell of your body."

the reading girl.

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve. 

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow. 

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book. 

Buy her another cup of coffee. 

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice. 

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does. 

She has to give it a shot somehow. 

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world. 

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two. 

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series. 

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are. 

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype. 

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots. 

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads." 

— Rosemary Urquico

I finished another book.

and it was good. This reads from its last page. 

"Perhaps, the lessons do remain. I learned much last year. I learned that the measure of life is revealed in the quality of your relationships; with God, our families, and our fellow men.

I've learned that the greatest threat to love is not circumstance but the absence of attention. For we do not neglect others because we have ceased to love; rather we cease to love others because we have neglected them. I've learned that each day is a miracle unearned. I've learned that while life is ephemeral- love is not. In short, I have learned what matters, and what does not. I do not know what my future holds or even in who's hands it lies, but I know where I am and what I have, and its enough."

Crime & Punishment.

I am seriously falling in love with Fyodor Dostoevsky. Though his books reach into the animal minds of us all, and are so ravished with depression and despair.. they captivate me so much! I dread putting them down, and ironically picking them back up. To give you just a small taste of his brilliance, I want to share a few quotes from him that I read yesterday. :)

this quote I found very ironic since this book was published 1866..

"How did your lecturer in Moscow reply when he was asked why he was forging notes? 'Everybody is getting rich one way or another, so I want to hurry up and get rich too.' I don't remember the exact words, but the upshot was taht he wants money for nothing, without waiting or working! We've got used to having everything ready-made for us, from walking on crutches to chewing our food. Then the great moment (Tsar Alexander II's emancipation of the *slaves) arrived, and everyone showed their true colours." 

haha, sound familiar? ^^

"Nonsense! There's no practicality." Razumkhin flew at him. "Practicality is a difficult thing to find; it does not drop down from heaven. And for the last two hundred years we have been divorced from all practical life. Ideas, if you like are fermenting," he said to Peter Petrovich, "and desire for good exists, though it's in a childish form, and honesty you may find, although there are people who hi-jack it. Anyway, there's no practicality. Practicality has to hae some kind of expereince behind it." 

This next quote is from a man who has fled his family for drink, and has met the main character in a pub, and is relaying his side of the story, per se. His words are dark, yet they echo the epitamy of this mans soul. You can sense it. Though its context has been ripped from it, as it is now just a quote, its still profound. Read on!

" 'To be pitied! Why am I to be pitied?' Marmeladov suddenly cried out, standing up with his arm out stretched, positively inspired, as though he had been only waiting for that question. 'Why am I to be pitied, you say? Yes! There's nothing to pity me for! I ought to be crucified, crucified on a cross, not pitied! Crucify , oh judge, crucify, but when you have crucified, take pity on him! And then I myself will go to be crucified, for it's not merry-making I seek but tears and tribulation! ...Do you suppose, you that sell, that this half-bottle of yorus has been sweet to me? It was tribulation I sought at the bottom of it, tears and tribulation, and have tasted it, and have fount it; but He will pity us Who has had pity on all men, Who has understood all men and all things, He is the One. He too is the judge. He will come in that day and He will ask: 'Where is the daughter who gave herself for mean, consumptive step-moether and for the filthy drunkard, her earthly father, undismayed by his beastliness?' And He will say, 'Come to me! I have already forgiven thee once...I have forgiven thee once...Thy sins which are many are fogiven thee for thou hast loved much...' And he will forgie my Sonia, He will forgive, I know it... I felt it in my heart when I was with her just now! And He will judge and will forgive all, the good and the evil, the and the meek....And when He has done with all of them, then He will summon us. 'You too come forth,' He will say, 'Come forth ye drunkards, come forth, ye weak ones, come forth, ye children of shame!' And we shall all come forth, withotu shame and shall stand before him. And He will say unto us, 'Ye are swine, made in the Image of the Beast and with his mark; but come ye also!' And the wise ones and those of understanding will say, 'Oh Lord, why dost Thou receive these men?' And He will say, 'This is why I receive them, oh ye wise, this is why I receive them, oh ye of understanding, that not one of them believed himself to be worthy of this.' And He will hold out His hands to us and we shall fall down before him...and we shall weep...and we shall understand, Katerina Ivanovna even..she will understand...Lord, they Kingdom come!'

aaah, a real literary genius! 

6 books.

I haven't read six books in this short of time since... I don't even remember when. Which, is a tragedy. books are beautiful, and after falling upon this quote, I can't help but love them even more so.

"Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers." 

— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

Each book I have read has offered divine and sweet wisdom, in which I had not even unearthed my deep longing for. Each of them, something different. Each of them, something perfect. 

My titles thus far include:

1.Eat Pray Love- Elizabeth Gilbert

2. Prayer- Various gospel teachers

3. Broken Things to Mend - Elder Holland

4. 7 Habits for Highly Effective Teens- Sean Covey

5. Crime & Punishment- Fyodor Dostoevsky

6. Bonds That Make Us Free- C. Terry Warner

I'm currently still fascinated by the last two.. Which is half the reason for this post. 

Yesterday I picked up Warner's book, and couldn't put it down. Its about yourself. Its about freeing your mind, so that you can become a better part of humanity. Its about change entering through your heart, and shining through every part of YOU. The opening of the preface quotes, "People can change fundamentally--in their hearts and not just in their outward behaviour...The possibility of overcoming very deep personal and interpersonal problems lies within the power of each of us." 

 Seducing, right?

now check out a part I read last night:

" FABLE: When we're stuck in troubled feelings, we believe that all our feelings are true--that is to say, we believe that by our emotions at that moment we are making accurate judgments and what's happening. If I'm angry with you, I'm certain that you are making me angry. 

FACT: Though we truly have these feelings, they are not necessarily true feelings. More likely I'm angry because I'm misusing you, not because you are misusing me. "

talk about WOW.  but, wait.. there's more. going on a couple pages you'll find this:

"In that moment a choice lay clearly before me. I could spend my life assembling, feeding, and protecting the egotistical, ravenous, and addictive fiction I called my self - or I could refuse it every sort of nurture and let it die an regretted death. I knew that unless i somehow could leave off my project of promoting and protecting myself and instead open myself to life, I wouldn't be doomed to a lifetime of self-involvement. I could see that self-absorption is poison to the spirit."

Right there, he played out the foundations of my future. I can either stagger on being selfish, ruthless, uninvolved, lost, and hated. or I can finally starve these demons and walk erect with passions and devotions that embrace the basics of humanity. I do not want to be found wounding another, simply because I do not fully understand my own self. This doesn't take much. In fact, the beauty is, it takes less. 

This book is filled with obvious truths. Its large and in charge, or else I would  quote the whole thing. but better yet, I recommend you go pick it up yourself. You won't regret it. I'm 100% positive it could help all of us become a little better, a little happier, and a little more aware. 

READ ON!

the silent Augusteum.

"I look at the Augusteum, and i think that perhaps my life has not actually been so chaotic, after all. It is merely this world that is chaotic, bringing changes to us all that nobody could have anticipated. The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, who i belong to, or what function i may once have intended to serve. Yesterday I might have been a glorious monument to somebody, true enough- but tomorrow I could be a fireworks depository. Even in the Eternal City, says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation."

-Elizabeth Gilbert

robert fulghum

"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death."

— Robert Fulghum 

(All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten) 

inspiring

"She belongs among the wildflowers,

 she belongs somewhere she feels free."

~The Time Traveler's Wife