A Few Thoughts on Week 1 of #100daysofinspirationalpeople...

1) It's satisfying to tell people they inspire you. Telling someone they inspire you isn't easy. It's awkward, and it takes you out of your comfort zone. (They say life begins when you step out of your comfort zone...) But it gets easier each time you do it. Also, it helps you connect with people that you otherwise would not connect with... and not just any people, but people whom you admire!

2) The pressure to find a new person for the project every day changes how you look at the world. I don't know what I was looking at before, but now I'm always on the lookout for people who inspire me... It's an artificial(?) reminder to take stock of the people in your life, and also to always be looking for the good in people and the world around you. What are you looking at every day? 

3) Not only do the inspirational people I've talked to not know that they're inspiring for one reason or another, they have a hard time accepting it. This leads me down a line of thinking that A) We all probably inspire others in some way without knowing it, B) We all are inspired by people even if we're not conscious of it; and C) How might we all benefit from being aware of those who inspire us, and also benefit the people who are doing the inspiring if we told them they inspire us?

4) I'm afraid I'll never complete this project, and I'm also afraid to type out  #100daysofinspirationalpeople for fear of misspelling it... 

Even if you don't want to do the 100 days project, just try telling a person in your life, or a total stranger, that you're doing a special project about inspirational people, and that you'd like to take their picture because they inspire you. I can pretty much guarantee you'll both walk away feeling a little bit better.

For Better or Worser

For better or worse, I say “for better or worse” a lot. Like, a lot a lot. It should probably be the title of my yet to be written memoir, because in addition to the fact that I say it all the time, it also sums up how I look at most situations in life. Things happen, and they tend to have both good and bad consequences. For example, I could say, “My parents are divorced… for better or worse”. Maybe it’s a result of my being a middle child, or a Virgo, or who knows… but I believe that all events that occur in life have both pros and cons; an upside and a downside. For better or worse.

Here are several examples that come to mind right now:

For better or worse, this is the first blog entry I’ve written in a long while.

For better or worse, it’s likely going to be an El Nino year.

For better or worse, I ate too much Korean BBQ last night.

For better or worse, I am not employed right now, which gives me time to write this.

For better or worse, I copied and pasted “For better or worse,” so that I don’t have to type it every time.

For better or worse, some people may not be reading “For better or worse” every time, but just skipping over it to get to the meat of the sentence. This is the meat of the sentence, for better or worse.

For better or worse, I had a lot of coffee this morning, and that likely resulted in this entry.
For better or worse, I hate when people say, "For better or worst."

I used to always end sentences with punctuation inside the quotation marks, but I’ve recently been told not to do it that way, so for better or worse, I am now confused.

For better or worse, the previous example was a variation of the established structure.

For bettor or worse, I just forgot to copy and paste “for better or worse,” and as a result I spelled “better” incorrectly, but for the sake of this example being unique I decided not to fix it.

For better or worse, Sea World.

For better or worse, this is my last example.

While I've always considered it to be a healthy approach to life, there may also be a defeatist element to it, too. Right? Like, if something really great happens, like if I were to say, “Oprah just gave me a brand new car!” I might immediately follow that up with, “For better or worse, because now my insurance is going to go up, and this car doesn’t get as good gas mileage as my old car.”

It’s not necessarily a Debbie-Downer effect so much as it is - not so subconsciously - my way of neutralizing something positive so that I can maintain a yin and yang viewpoint of the universe; a seemingly healthy defense mechanism. But maybe this outlook is not as healthy as I like to think. Maybe it prevents me from fully relishing in my victories, and conversely, it also prevents me from fully absorbing my defeats. In other words: not getting the most of out life. But damnit, I love saying it... I'll have to think about it some more, but I'm glad I brought this to my attention, and yours.

On that note, I think I'll stop here for now. And notice what I'm not saying as my last sentence. Clue: It rhymes with more getter door purse. Maybe I'll just start saying that from now on...

Poem of the Day

A Matter of Fate

by Todd Weinger

What a bizarre stroke of fate,

that we should be born at this time,

to this place, with these lives. The odds

are too impossibly great to ponder,

far greater even than the chance that life could

exist at all on this planet,

in this galaxy, or this universe.

And yet every blessed moment passes and blurs

into the next, it seems; days slip into

decades without our noticing, and the memories

we make forever swim around in our dreams.

Stranger yet to think

we’re all given even one chance to ride this

wave called life, and see for the briefest while

whatever ups and downs the gods

might throw our way; and how

many get on at the

            worst possible time, or fall off so much

sooner than what they had in mind.

    

            Maybe that’s why

I woke up in this darkest hour, moments

before dawn, when nothing in the world

could possibly be right or wrong, so I could

remind myself

that the odds of having one good day,

one good minute, or even one good second

are so impossibly small, the fact that

some of us can have so many is the strangest,

most splendid miracle of all.