Ode to the gentleman

She’s just an ordinary girl who had an ordinary day, but she’s slightly disgusted with humanity and specifically with the specimen called male. Self-centered insensitive dogs, all of them.

She’s just an ordinary girl who’s at an ordinary country dance, standing in the middle of the floor, hoping someone will ask her to dance.

No one’s walking her way. Oh. She looks for a place to sit. That was awkward.

Then you appear. Tall and good-looking, sweet and sincere.

“Will you dance with me?”

At those words a smile breaks out on that ordinary girl’s face.

“I’d love to!”

Then you say the magic words… “thank you.

She replies, “thank you,” and she is thanking you for much more than the dance.
She is thanking you for not expecting her to be as gorgeous as your girlfriend, for being kind to her even though she knows she’s not your type.

She is thanking you for doing her a favor, while making her feel like she is the one that has done you the favor.

She is thanking you for restoring her belief in mankind, for being one of that endangered species that are so very few and hard to find.

To every one who is a member of that endangered species, thank you. You are appreciated more than you may ever know. Viva la gentleman!

 

Dare to fail

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” -Robert Kennedy

I love this quote, which I got from one of my daily quote emails. I have another one from Soren Kierkegaard: “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose one’s self.” And as my daddy says his daddy said, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

Do you want to live? Then dare to do so! Jump outside of your comfort zones, your safety lines, your boundaries. Tackle the world head on. Don’t be afraid of failure, of wounded pride. Go fly that kite – it may take ten tries to get in the air, but that tenth time of soaring is definitely worth the first nine thuds.

Don’t just stand there, shivering in your safe corner, afraid to live. You will regret it, so leap into life! You might find embarrassment, heartbreak, confusion, even failure. But it will be all worth it, because living is a beautiful thing that you don’t want to miss out on. If you watch closely, you might even find a few moments of euphoric happiness.

So forget about the known, the secure, the safe. Find the spot on the map that says “here there be dragons” – and go there!

“One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of shore for a very long time.” -Andre Gide

 

The Benefits of Boredom

I found this little tidbit while flipping through the June Reader’s Digest yesterday, and it really struck me. I’m sure we’ve all heard this same basic message before ( “I miss Mayberry, sitting on the porch drinking ice cold cherry coke… watching the clouds roll by,” as Rascal Flatts sings). But maybe we haven’t heard it exactly the way Carolyn Johnson says it:

Boredom’s doldrums were unavoidable, yet also a primordial soup for some of life’s most quintessentially human moments… A long drive home after a frustrating day could force ruminations.  A pang of homesickness at the start of a plane ride might put a journey in perspective.

Increasingly, these emtpy moments are being saturated with productivity, communication, and the digital distractions offered by an ever-expanding array of slick mobile devices…

But are we too busy twirling through the songs on our iPods–while checking email, while changing lanes on the highway–to consider whether we are giving up a good thing?  We are most human when we feel dull.  Lolling around in a state of restlessness is one of life’s greatest luxuries–one not available to creatures that spend all their time pursuing mere survival.  To be bored is to stop reacting to the external world, and to explore the internal one.  It is in these times of reflection that people often discover something new, whether it is an epiphany about a relationship or a new theory about the way the universe works.  Granted, many people emerge from boredom feeling that they have accomplished nothing.  But is accomplishment really the point of life?  There is a strong argument that boredom–so often parodied as a glassy-eyed drooling state of nothingness–is an essential human emotion that underlies art, literature, philosophy, science, and even love.

“The Joy of Boredom,” by Carolyn Y. Johnson, The Boston Globe

Whenever people think of living, I think that they subconsciously think of experiences.  We spend our entire lives thinking, “once I get ‘x’ over and done with, then I can really start living.”  ‘X’ may be something different for everybody–finishing school, moving to a new town, getting some great job opportunity, retiring, whatever.  But maybe living is something that happens in the quiet moments that are in between all the bustle of life–in between twirling your iPod, changing lanes, and checking email.  Maybe if we spent more time watching the clouds roll by and less time distracting ourselves with our iPods, we would have fuller lives.