Dear Summer, This is the First Day of My Life…

“Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.” – Dalai Lama

My life is for living. Not just working, and studying, and making dinner, and sleeping.

Not just catching up with DVR shows, and not just checking in on Facebook.

Not just for dating, or drinking, or hanging out.

My life is for living. Actively, freely, happily, healthily, and with compassion – living for me. Living the kind of life that fills you up to the brim, and you are sooo full of life that any moment you feel that you may burst!

I remember the first day I ever lived. It was the first day that I really lived for myself and realized that I owned the moments and outcomes of my life. I had just arrived in Madrid for my first solo international trip. I remember thinking I would just “wing it” to get from the airport to Puerta del Sol, the bustling epicenter of Madrid. So an exhausted jet-lagged Mara and her big red suitcase jumped on the metro and got lost for two hours. When I finally arrived at the Sol metro stop, I hauled my oversized suitcase up the stairs (it was too big for the escalator) while hurried and annoyed commuters bristled past me.

When I made it to the top of the stairs, it was mid-day in Sol and I was stunned and speechless. Never before had anything in my life looked so grand, so beautiful, so intimidating, and yet so full of limitless potential. I remember taking the biggest breath of Spanish air that I could muster and I vowed to memorize the moment. The first moment I had really lived for myself.

It has been over 6 years since I studied in Madrid. But the memory of the moment still inspires me. The friends I made in Spain, even though I don’t talk to them much, still exist. Proof positive that it was real, I was there, and that I lived.

Now that I am a “responsible adult” I can’t just jet off to a foreign country to live. I have a job I take pride in, and friends and family that I love and that depend on me. But I still want to live a meaningful life. I still want moments I can memorize. I want to be full to the brim.

For a few years shaky years there, I equated my primary meaning in life with my relationship. I became stagnant in my own self-development because I was so focused on someone else’s happiness and making sure the life we were building was as happy as I could make it. And somewhere along the way, I stopped really living for me.

This is the first day of my life.

In the past few weeks, I have been filling myself up to the brim. I have been traveling on many mini-adventures, visiting with old friends and making lots of new ones, trying new things (I actually rode on a motorcycle!), writing, running, and cupcake-baking. But I want more!

Dear warm California Summer, I am dedicating your glorious months to Me. I am picking up bits of inspiration from everyone I meet and I’m forging a life rich with learning, growing, stretching, and self-exploration and evolution. My goals, dear Summer, are lofty. I am training to run a 5k and then a 10k by August. I vow to perfect a chocolate soufflé and the best-ever crème brulee. I am borrowing a “starter guitar” and am taking guitar lessons. I signed up for a metalwork jewelry class on Saturdays. I am going to learn how to golf and swim. And I am signing up to take a statistics class to remind myself that “living” is also a challenge.  (I have evaded math my whole life, but living is about conquering fears!) I will not take your warm days for granted, Summer, and in your comforting months, I intend to live life fully.

And somewhere in this Summer of Self — between guitar practice and learning the backstroke — I hope to have a few moments of meaning that I can memorize. Moments where I look at the sun, take a deep breath, and know that I am living for myself.

*Photo by Reservasdecoches via Flickr.

What I Don’t Learn From My Parents…I Learn from William and Kate

My friend, a single twentysomething, has a theory. “People date people who ‘feel like home.’”

Her theory is that whatever your home life was growing up, that you tend to date people (albeit subconsciously) that reenact that vibe of ‘home.’

Her parents, for example, had a problem with addictions (alcohol and gambling, more specifically). When dating, my friend is on heightened alert to avoid men who may have any kind of an addictive personality, but (as it always tends to go) it seems that those are the guys she likes the most – despite her better judgment.

I’m not here to explore the validity of her argument. But, generally speaking, it does seem to make sense that subconsciously we mimic the patterns of our role models.  Undoubtedly, for most of us, our parents (or step-parents, as often the case may be) were our role models for relationships.

I don’t have very many friends whose parents are still married. With the divorce rate so high (over 50% — meaning, you might as well flip a coin as to whether your marriage will last), and if we accept the argument that ‘we seek relationships that feel like home’ –

Does that then mean we are doomed to repeat our parents mistakes?

It seems so….

This brings me to my next point.

Why care about the royal wedding?

I made it a rule to hide every Facebook post that talked about the royal wedding. I boycotted my usual gossip websites. I didn’t flip through even one US Weekly in the grocery checkout line if there was even a mention of Kate or William. I couldn’t believe that so much money was being spent on this wedding when there is so much need in the world. And the fact that I was barraged with royal wedding details at every turn made me really irritated.

I get it. They are royal and getting married. But seriously, I don’t care to watch or hear anything about this lavishly curated production.

But on the morning of the royal wedding, my friend was visiting from Arizona. While I was making coffee and getting ready for work, she flipped on the replay of the wedding. It the part where Kate walked up to the alter and William whispered to her “you look beautiful.”

And then I realized it. The royal wedding, while lavishly curated, gave the world an opportunity to believe in love again. In my generation, our parental role models are divorced. We date people who are often reminiscent of certain patterns of behavior we witnessed in the home. And, frankly, it is really hard to believe in love.

It is hard to believe that getting married and having a family will ultimately prove to be a happy path of life-long love. But in that moment, when the world watched two young people (who inevitably will face extraordinary challenges throughout their marriage) pledge their lives and love to each other, William and Kate became our new role models.

And I became a little less jaded.

And I think it’s a good thing that we can a have renewed resolve (even if it is for one brief televised wedding moment) to believe that with hard work and compromise (and hopefully a lot of growth, fun, and laughter), we too can live happily ever after.

Thoughts??

*Photo by MikeBaird via Flickr.

Wordless Wednesday: Adulthood is Surprising

Personal Best

Recently I started running.

I have never been really interested in “running” in my life. Previously I had only considered running valuable if I needed to run away from something or someone, or if I was playing in a soccer game. In those cases, there was either a utilitarian purpose to running or a recreational one.

A few months ago, I was talking to a good friend of mine about his journey as a runner. He told me the story of how he started running: he just started off by running five minutes, and every day he increased his time running by one minute. Eventually he was able to run a 5k, followed by a 10k, followed by a half marathon, and now he has run many marathons! He once told me, “It isn’t about how far you run, or how fast or how long. It is about achieving your ‘personal best.’”

The idea of ‘personal best’ struck me as a meaningful philosophy for not just running, but all of life.  So, I made it a goal to live every day to my personal best.

For me, achieving my ‘personal best’ manifests in all aspects of my life: in my professional life, my academic life, and my personal life. This doesn’t necessarily mean that I always succeed, or that every day I am operating as my best-and-brightest self (though I hope most days I am). What it does mean is that in every situation I try to do the best that I can for what I am capable of in the moment. [*]

[*] That doesn’t mean I don’t still make mistakes, the goal is to learn from them so I can be wiser the next time!

I have been doing it pretty well in my professional life, I think. I work hard, I support my colleagues, I stand up for things that I believe in, I keep a positive attitude, I learn from every professional development challenge I face. Every day that I wake up for work I am happy because I believe that, in my own small way, I am an advocate for kids who are facing some really daunting emotional and mental health challenges. This job — and the great team I work with — are a personal best for me.

In my academic life, I am going to be striving for my personal best to finish my exhausting thesis and my MA!  Once I finish that, even if I never go on to a Ph.D. program, I will still strive for continued personal bests – even if it is just learning a language or acing a math class.

In my personal life, it seems harder to be strive for ‘personal best.’ I have taken up running, and it is really nooooo easy feat to transition from “non-runner” to “runner.” This morning, with the encouragement of Marathon Friend (mentioned above), I ran 2 miles!  In the morning! And tomorrow we are going to run again, until I can enter a 5k, then a 10k, then a half marathon. (Marathon Friend is training for another marathon, of course.)

This brings me to my next point.

Personal best is about surrounding yourself with people who support or inspire or push you to be your personal best. For me this is a host of people. My mom, of course, who encourages and inspires me every day. My brothers who, without fail or complaint, always offer to carry my heavy loads. And my great friends — new and old — who support me and cheer me on despite my silly antics, my crazy schedule, and my hair-brained schemes (like my mission to eventually run a half-marathon). For me, personal best also means being compassionate and respectful to others, even if you feel they don’t always deserve it. It means showing love and gratitude to my friends and family, and telling them warmly and often just how much they mean to me.

I have also learned that I want my next relationship to be with someone who I can be my ‘personal best’ with — and someone who I can support to be their personal best too. This, I think, was missing with my last relationship (though my former beau did make me a better and kinder person in so many ways, for which I will always be grateful.) I know he and I are both moving on from our relationship to find that person who will be “our personal best.” It isn’t about how fast or slow you find the person, or how far you go, it’s about not stopping the run until you find your personal best.

My question to you, Adulthooders:

In what ways are you striving for “personal best” in your lives? When is it easiest (and hardest) to be at your best?

Ruminations on these questions, or any other thoughts, are welcomed in the comments!

*Photo via Hiddenloop on Flickr.