Nothing Gold Can Stay

"So dawn goes down to day / Nothing gold can stay." -Robert Frost

Today is a short post, fellow bloggers. I will try to be more in-depth as my schedule calms down for the summer. Here we go:

My family moved many times while I was growing up. I got so accustomed to seeing brown cardboard boxes and clear packaging tape that it became second nature. I would watch the moving crew come and transport all of our worldly belongings not once, but many times over the course of my life. I'd stand by warily, watching them lift our heavy piano, and think, Please don't drop it. I'll be crushed if you do. I remember saying goodbye to friends, each time harder than the last. Each time wondering if or when I'd see them again. It's made goodbyes very hard for me over the years. I'm not good at them. I never have been, and I doubt I ever will be.

My point? Times change. People move on with their lives. Friends move. New career paths are discovered and old ones left behind. Nothing gold can stay. It is a part of life, moving on. Just like the physical act of moving from one place to another.

One of Robert Frost's lesser known poems, "Nothing Gold Can Stay" still holds a lot of significance in our everyday lives. While the poem has a nature metaphor, it is easy to see that it is also about beginnings and endings. Beginning in one place and ending in another. Such is the ever-changing course of our world.

Even though Frost believes that nothing gold can stay, do not forget that like the seasons, there are always new beginnings. Perhaps some of those good "gold" moments have faded, but new ones will take their place in time. The cycle will always continue.

Nothing gold can stay.

Summertime, and the livin' is easy...

"Summertime, and the livin' is easy..."

Summer is great for a lot of things. Popsicles. Aviator sunglasses. Wiggling your toes in the freshly mowed grass. Endless starry nights. Beaches. Daisies. Having supper on the patio. Campfires. S'mores. Driving with the windows rolled down.

Or summertime is maybe simply a time to get out of the house and just go. Somewhere. Anywhere. A break from the normal daily routine of life.

In Spite of Everything

"It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them, because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. I simply can't build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery, and death . . . 

I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that this cruelty too shall end, and that peace and tranquility will return once again." -Anne Frank

The news channels never seem to get better. Every time I turn on the news, or read the paper, there's more destruction going on in our world. War. Hatred. Death. Despair. It feels as though it never ends.

Observations I make as I go about my daily routine help me restore my faith in humanity. A young man helps an elderly lady by holding the door open for her. A teenager soothes the cries of a child who appears to be lost. A simple smile exchanged with a stranger. Like Anne states, I think if we try hard enough, we can all believe "that people are truly good at heart."

Believe in Your Values

"I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity and her flaming self respect and it's these things I'd believe in even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all that she should be . . . 

I love her and that's the beginning and end of everything." -F. Scott Fitzgerald

Oftentimes I'm criticized for my "old-fashioned ideals." Sometimes, I have had my friends and family laugh at my values and scoff at the things I hold dear.

I'm a girl with old-fashioned values in a very modern world.

In a society that is constantly telling us who we should be, it's hard to keep our own individual values from slipping away. It takes a certain kind of courage to continue to believe in things that are seemingly lost in a sea of characteristics that the world tells us we ought to have.

Some people sacrifice too many of their values for the things the world tells us we "need": money, prosperity, beauty, success, intimacy... the list is never-ending. Rather than take a step back and ask ourselves, do I really need this? so many of us simply jump on the bandwagon of what everyone else is doing. Humanity justifies itself in so many things simply because there are others who have already done it.

What has happened to our ideals?

The Rainmakers

"As long as the Great Circle remains unbroken, there are those who know that there will be a home for the children of Fear, and a place for the Rainmakers to play." 

- from The Rainmakers, a Native American story

I'm sure we've all seen children playing ecstatically in the rain. They put on their little red rain boots, a bright, slick yellow coat, and run squealing up and down the driveway as they jump gleefully in water puddles. Soon it becomes a competition to see who can make the biggest splash, or find the biggest puddle, or make the biggest mess. When I was younger, this was always a contest between me and my cousins.

Maybe you too were one of those children, once upon a time.

There's something freeing about the rain. The rain washes away everything, bringing with it a new beginning. As we grow older, we lose that simplicity of playing in the rain. The simplicity is replaced by the dread that we're going to get wet, or it's going to mess up "our good hair day", or that we'll be caught in a torrential downpour with no umbrella. Been there, done that, right?

Delirium

http://www.laurenoliverbooks.com/delirium.php

It is time for another book review post! I recently finished Lauren Oliver's remarkable Delirium trilogy. The trilogy is a dystopian series that revolves around the life of Lena Holoway. Lena lives in a society in which love - or deliria - is viewed as a terrible disease and one that must be prevented. Scientists are able to cure the disease and keep it from contaminating others. The government makes certain that all citizens receive the cure at the time of their 18th birthday. Before her procedure, Lena encounters the unthinkable disaster: she falls in love.

Delirium is the first in the trilogy, followed by Pandemonium and Requiem, respectfully. Obviously, I won't go too in-depth about the plotline because I know you don't want spoilers! This trilogy is a riveting portrayal of the powerful advantages and shortcomings of love in a dangerous world. Oliver weaves a complex picture of what it means to be in love when all others are against the idea of something so uncertain. I found her writing style to be refreshing and incredibly in-depth. She has a unique way of perceiving the emotions of people. Lena is a character who grows stronger throughout the course of the trilogy and ultimately discovers her own beliefs on life. Many of Lena's thought-provoking passages stood out to me over the duration of the novel:

"It's so strange how life works: you want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking forever to come. Then it happens and it's over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed" (Oliver 38).

C'est la vie

C'est la vie - a French saying meaning "such is life." 

Hello fellow internet users and bloggers,

I apologize for the delay since my last post. Life has been busy for me - as a teacher, I've been wrapping up the end of the school year and all that comes with it. I'm moving on now, to a new place and soon, a new position. It's strange sometimes to think of change and how it affects our lives. It is the choices we make as people that affect us. Sometimes it's hard to know if our choices will be for the better, but we can only hope that everything will turn out right in the end.

I struggle with making decisions. I think in some ways, we all do. Someone once said, "The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live." It's true. But oftentimes we don't know where those new doors will lead us.