As my time in California comes to a quick close, I find myself AWAKE when I so desperately want to be ASLEEP, so I turned to blogging to try and lull myself to dreamland eventually. I have been doing some pretty intense reflecting since I have been in my hometown. Being around my family tends to make me look inward and realize my true potential and remind myself of who I really am. I have been so overwhelmed with love from my extended family, friends, and immediate family sending me well wishes and embracing me while whispering in my ear "you are such a special person", "I love you so much", and of course the "whoever gets you is the luckiest man alive" speech.
As I have reflected on this I realized something profound. I realized that when you love somebody you have to show it, you have to make it so clear that they never doubt it. You have to ensure that they feel your love constantly. That is what a family does. I think of my mom who not only shows it through her packages and hugs and kisses, but in her selfless service and example as well. Whether I am near or far I never doubt the love my mother has for me. Or my sweet father who doesn't always express himself the best with words, but will send me cute love texts of the song he wrote me the day I was born to remind me that he is thinking of me. Then there is my darling brother, my missionary, that tells me every week through email what an amazing sister I am and that the more time he spends away from me the more he realizes what a blessing I am in his life and what it truly means to be a best friend.
So I guess what I really have come to learn is when you have someone in your life that means the world to you, show it. Cherish them and make sure that they know it. Never have them question how you feel about them, even when you think they know.
I feel like the world has been bringing me down recently with "you must look this way", or "you must eat this" or "you must act this way" or "you aren't really happy until you have completed this", when in reality the matters of the world are not important at all, the views of how others see me doesn't and shouldn't matter. And yet somehow they do. I found myself never feeling "good enough", "skinny enough", "pretty enough", "fashionable enough". When I reflected I realized that has never really mattered to me, and why should it now? I feel as if I somewhat lost sight of that recently.
Being home has reminded me that families are not perfect and neither are people. Heck, I come from a family full of misfits, and yet we all are close and love each other because we make it clear that love is the center of our family. No matter what the other goes through, or how someone looks, acts, or smells, we are bonded in the sense that we are a family engulfed in love. We love each other and we tell each other every single time we see each other, every end of a text conversation, every end of the phone call. We just call to say "I love and miss you". We genuinely care for the other and we make it known. We don't judge each other off of our appearance, we don't underestimate our ability to succeed. Instead we support one another, and we are unified because of it.
Growing up in California was blissful and being here these 10 days has been blissful as well. So many hugs, so many laughs, and so many "I love you's", I wouldn't have it any other way. We may all come in different shapes and sizes, with different personalities, with different ways of cleaning our homes, different ways of expression, but we are all unified in one thing: Love. We show it in our own ways and time, but we all love each other, and that, my friends, is all that really matters: to love and be loved in return, and to be yourself because everybody else is taken.
In more plain and simple terms here are the things I am thinking In the Words of Dr. Seuss:
“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”
“Why fit in when you were born to stand out?”
“So be sure when you step, Step with care and great tact. And remember that life's A Great Balancing Act. And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and ¾ percent guaranteed) Kid, you'll move mountains.”
“I am weird, you are weird. Everyone in this world is weird. One day two people come together in mutual weirdness and fall in love.”
“To the world you may be one person; but to one person you may be the world.”
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It's not.”
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