bazaar

Hello fresh! Hello color! Hello bright! Hello fun! Hello nice! Hello smile! Hello breath! Hello air! Hello taste! Hello!

vision

I just read the most fantastic essay in a book that I've been putting down and picking up for longer than I'd like to admit. Drakulic talks about this idea that we grow up in an area, and once a move occurs, our eyes catch certain things. Our ability to focus in on experiences and choose what is important and what is irrelevant is so natural, and yet so immature. We look back on friendships, trips, words, fights, homework assignments, dreams and pick out what is conveniently obvious.

Drakulic was able to always point our poverty and extra food in the garbage based upon her experiences of communism and remembering that America was promised to be clean and perfect. Instead of the picture, she was faced with scenes of homeless people calling out for quarters and old McDonald's burgers going to waste. All those years of waiting for the ideal were crushed because she naturally looked for what was wrong without even thinking. How unfortunate to grow up and live in a way expecting bad to come, and always knowing that the transition out of habit would never fully be complete.

New volunteers have joined Dnepropetrovsk, and while we were chatting about our recent experiences, I pointed out that the only reason people here lose sight of what is important here is because they choose to see what is the worst. (Which reminds me that I had a fantastic idea to start the ultimate "two types of people" list - for example: those who choose to see the bad and those who choose to see the good, those who care about the future and those who care about the past).

Where was I? At my eyes, which only see what I want right now knowing that now it is more important to be smiling than it is to be waiting for the curve to get bigger.

Good luck to the new.

action

I wonder about why I care about other people. What makes me so inclined to care about what other people are doing at any given moment? And when other people act a certain way, what makes my stomach turn or my heart ache? What makes my mouth curve? Do other people do the same about me? When I make a wrong move, or if I say something bad, do others wish I did something else? Our obsession with our friends' and family's actions, or even the actions of strangers, is sometimes unreal. Do I want everyone to act according to me, or do I want to act more like them? When my friend hurts his or her self, do I wish he or she made a different decision? And is it fair of me to judge?

Here are some things that I'm doing in the moment:

Homemade vareniky.

Shashlik barbecue.

Our picnic.

Mulberries for jam.

Strawberries for jam.

Jamming.

holy

"Thank God, at the ultimate, we are a species of great potential."

Our potential to grow is so obvious but we drag ourselves down with old addictions and bad feelings, and we forget what we can do if we just let go and stop thinking for moments. When the oldest addiction has lost its effect, we keep going back to it because it is familiar, even when we know that maybe time away from it will give us the clarity we need to grow and find out if in fact it is addiction we want, or if it is the extension that we are missing. Addictions make us angry - chocolate, cigarettes, food, facebook, drugs, caffeine, perfection, being liked - when they are not given the right balance.

I just found out that my summer will be filled with camp until the end of July, so I am quite happy because I will have the chance to get some clarity, alone, away from school and in the best season of learning (summer).

"For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson