you are a sunset

“People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, “Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner.” I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.” - Carl R. Rogers

When I read this quote, I feel a sense of peace. We are just as beautiful as sunsets, and I think we forget that a lot. We forget that people are beautiful and stunning and special and one-of-a-kind and breath-taking. We forget that we're all these things, and we look in the mirror and pick at things we hate, and we walk past girls on the street and pick at things we hate about them, and it's a never ending circle of over-analyzing everyone.

I try and go every day with noticing one thing I love about myself. I was never self-conscious as a little girl, or into my pre-teen years. I wasn't really that self-conscious throughout high school either, but I was acutely more aware of how a shirt fit me, or if my smile looked good in a selfie or not. And I never want to be one of those people who rant about social media and how it's ruining our youth or whatever, but I do see how selfies and taking pictures of myself affect the way I see myself. 

I think as I get older I get more frustrated with how I feel about myself. Which is normal, and I just have to pull myself back and remember that I am who I am for a million reasons, and that's just fine.

And when you look at someone, and feel the need to  pick apart their image, you're doing it all wrong. 

My favorite part of this quote is, "I watch with awe as it unfolds", because I think we forget to look at people, and the way their eyes light up when they talk about something they love, or when they cry at movies, or how someone's laugh can make them the most beautiful human being on earth. I think we forget to stop and watch the beauty of someone being THEM. Personally, I don't think there's anything beautiful than getting to know someone, and as I go through this time in my life where I am meeting so many new people, it feels like watching sunsets, getting to see people become more themselves the longer I get to know them. 

So appreciate sunsets and appreciate people and realize how similar the two are, and watch in awe at just how beautiful it all is. 

growing into love

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new."- Ursula K. Le Guin

I think that people often think that once a couple is happy, it's so easy to keep it that way. The way I look at it is this: People are always changing, and this doesn't exclude people who are in love. I think that especially young love is the most difficult kind of love, because from the age of 14 to 20-something, you don't have a damn clue what you're doing. If you do, you're lying to yourself.

Hell, you could be 68 and still have no clue. But that's beside the point. What I'm saying is that growing up is hard enough, but being in love and growing up at the same time changes the game. Guin compares love to bread, which seems weird at first, but it's so true. Love can go bad. It happens all the time, but it's the people that know that love involves constant changing, on both partners side, that love each other unconditionally and forever. 
Sometimes bread goes stale, or rots, but that doesn't call for the end of everything. You toss out the loaf, and you bake some new bread. I may be someone who forgives easily, but I also believe that starting over can make a hell of a difference when it comes to love. When you grow, you mess up, ALL the time. As a teenager, I always felt like relationships we're given enough slack. That sounds awful, but I mean, we're teenagers. When aren't we going to screw things up? So I learn to bake a new loaf of bread. I learn to make new of my love, and remember why I'm here in the first place. 
I'm a hopeful romantic, I always have been. I was before I was in a serious relationship, and I am one while currently in a serious relationship. 
I've always been a person who chooses not to talk about my relationship, because no one needs to hear about it. I don't mind, I don't feel the need to tell anyone anything about my partner and I's "problems", because it feels wrong sharing those things with someone who's not him, it's between the two of us and in the end someone else's opinion shouldn't help make a decision that involves only him and me. Maybe people disagree with this style of handling it, but I like it better this way. It's a lot less messy in my opinion. 
I'm straying from my original point, though. From the 3 1/2 years that I've be growing up and falling in love, I feel like I know a thing or two about how to make new of my love as my boyfriend and I change. And with the amount of change that happens from my freshman year of high school to my freshman year of college, we're champs in my eyes.
I don't know how we do it, I don't have some nifty pocket book or something like that. We just keep going, and that's harder than it sounds. So many times you want to give up, but it's just not that simple when you love someone. 
This quote means something to me just for the fact that when I read it, I felt it. I felt like whenever someone asks me, "How do you stay together for so long?" that's what I needed to be saying. And it will be what I say from now on, because I don't know if I've read a truer statement regarding love. 
You cannot just BE in love. You have to GROW in love, together. 

mattering

During my senior year of high school, my AP Literature teacher assigned us the "This I Believe.." assignment (link to the website: http://thisibelieve.org/). I was immediately excited about it, because it was one of the first "creative" assignments we had all year. This was the outcome.

Mattering

This I believe is true: “What matters to you defines your mattering.”

It is the belief that someone or something has the power to change you, the power to move you, and the power to define you. I have spent the last 18 years of my life trying to define my mattering. Who am I? What makes me me? I’m still not sure who I am, and that’s okay. It’s okay to not know where I’m going, or what I’m going to do, because I know what matters to me and I know that I matter. I used to struggle with the idea of being “average”. I struggled with the idea that I didn’t have a right to struggle. I thought my life was too “good” to have a right to complain about anything.

“There are kids in Africa dying, you know?”

“Be grateful.”

“You’re lucky.”

“Your family is perfect, I’m so jealous.”

This is what I defined my mattering as. I believed I didn’t have the right to be sad, angry, or feel like life isn’t fair. I let these things define me, I let them tell me who I could and could not be. I let them dull my feelings and deemed them less important. I let them lessen my mattering.

This was wrong.

I can move mountains with my words; my words can start revolutions, move people, and make someone feel something. One day I will see my name on the cover of a Bestseller. One day I will change at least one person’s life. This matters to me.

Words, music, and the people I surround myself with; these define my mattering. It is the way a pencil felt against the thick journal pages when I first started writing when I was 9 and the stories I’ve carried with me to this day. It is the books I read when I was 10 and it is the books I read now. It is the songs that make me cry and the songs I can’t help singing in the car (no matter how much I hate them). It is the friends I had in second grade, and it is the friends I have now. It is the best friends I don’t talk to anymore, the ones I still love, even if I avoid them in the halls. It is the boy I’ve grown up with for the last 3 years, and it is the boy who I will spend the rest of my life with one day. It is the image I have of myself; that I can do what I love and love who I am.

These are the things that define me. These are the things that matter. It is not their opinions of me; it is not my struggles or my successes or how others define these struggles and successes. I define myself.

And this I believe

 is me. 

understanding

“There’s nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.” - Jonathan Safran Foer

Another quote post; this should surprise you all less and less as you get to know me. I felt personally connected to this one when I stumbled upon it on tumblr. I think so often people feel like they need to have their lives together, especially at my age (18), from the time we were 16 and being told to pick our future college, we've thought we had to have it all figured out.

I have never agreed with this. I haven't even lived half as long as the average human being, there's so much I haven't learned. So why do I, and every student I know, feel like we have an obligation to have our shit together? Because lord knows we don't, we just pretend to.

So I am telling everyone (including myself) that there is NOTHING wrong with not understanding myself. I may live to be 102 and still never fully understand who I am or who I want to be. And that's fine. We are all here climbing the same mountain, and we're all a little lost sometimes. I believe that not understanding yourself can even be a good thing. Not understanding yourself means it's time for some exploration, maybe a little adventuring; it's a time to TRY NEW THINGS! (I'd like to pat myself on the back for trying something new aka this blog).

Look, my point is this: Do not let someone tell you that you have to understand yourself to move forward in life. We are always moving, changing, growing, and in turn we are constantly losing understanding for who we are. And hey, if you feel content and feel like you have full control of your understanding, good for you! I only hope the rest of us can get on your level some day.

I'm rambling now, but I do believe that there should be no shame in having no idea what you're doing with your life. Whether you're 15, 18, or 102, keep being you, exploring your understanding, and I promise you have nothing to worry about.

**what are your thoughts on this quote?? I'd love to hear**

noticing when you are happy

"I urge you to please notice when you are happy."- Kurt Vonnegut 

If you haven't already noticed the reference to this quote in my blog title, this is it. It's become my latest quote obsession, and I already know it's one of those I'll always keep in my pocket for bad days (and good ones). I just want to reflect on this quote a little.

It's from Vonnegut's book A Man Without A Country. I will be upfront and say I never have read this book, I've never even heard of it until I looked it up. But I did find it through a novel (Lets Get Lost by Adi Alsaid. Haven't finished it but it's at about 3 stars for me at the moment) and the moment I read the words, I stopped everything and wrote it down. In my phone, in my journal. I just had to make sure I NEVER forgot those words. It was just one of those quotes.

So after lusting over it for several weeks, I still have that same butterflies-in-my-stomach happiness every time I re-read it. And now I've come to the conclusion that this should be the #1 quote to live by. And trust me I've read through thousands of quotes, but this one just keeps sticking to me. I think it's a beautiful perspective to have on happiness, because so often we don't realize how happy we are until we're looking back on something. And all we have left is the memories to reminisce on and fill ourselves with could'ves/should'ves/would'ves. 

My point is, I want to always notice when I am happy. And just as Vonnegut said, I urge you all to do so, as well. I think there would be a lot less negativity in the world, if we would just realize the joy we experience, the moment we're experiencing it. 

So that's my extended explanation for the title of my blog and my current quote obsession.

***What's your current quote obsession? And why?***