120 - eat pray love

"...People universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you are fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works.

Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness...you must never become lax in maintaining it."

-Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love

i'm going to see EPL the movie this week, and though i'm a little skeptical since i adored the book, i'm looking forward to bonding with my best friend and having a night to relax and be girly. plus, if all else fails, i usually like most julia roberts movies (except notting hill - was that honestly horrible, or am i a cold hearted bitch?), so i'll do my best to enjoy the movie for that.

96 - a word is worth 1000 pictures

from eat pray love:

"He said, 'Don't you know that the secret to understanding a city and its people is to learn - what is the word on the street?'"

"Then he went on to explain, in a mixture of English, Italian and hand gestures, that every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there. If you could read people's thoughts as they were passing you on the streets of any given place, you would discover that most of them are thinking the same thought. Whatever that majority thought might be - that is the word of the city. And if your personal word does not match the word of the city, then you don't really belong there."

after this revelation, the author goes on to debate what her own "personal word" is. she explains that it should be something that captures the most important part of yourself...a word to which you can relate on many different levels. of course, while reading this section, i couldn't help but wonder what my own "personal word" might be.

to be self-absorbed for a moment here, i started by thinking of the qualities i have that i like the best: talkative (obviously), creative (sometimes), friendly, a hard worker, and easy to get along with. then i realized that most of those things have something in common - they have to do with the way i relate to other people. and then i had a bigger realization that the most important things to me are my relationships with the people in my life. so clearly, whatever my "word" is needs to be related to those things. i thought about this for a few more minutes before it came to me.

i think my word is loyal. i'm loyal to my family. i'm loyal to my friends at all times. i'm loyal in relationships, even when the boys i've been with don't deserve it - and aren't we all? i'm loyal to my job, and that's why i stick with it even when i'm frustrated. (okay, loyalty and a steady paycheck are equally important here.) on a smaller scale, i'm loyal to my sports teams. i'm loyal to my favorite restaurants. i'm even loyal to my hometown library, which is easy because it's the #1 library in the nation. i'm loyal to my college and my sorority, and the reason i didn't jump off a bridge when the colts lost the super bowl was because a saints win meant that an old friend of mine from my high school got a super bowl ring. i'm even loyal to people from my past who i rarely speak to anymore. i guess you could say i'm loyal to memories, too.

more importantly, i'm loyal to myself! i know who i am, and i'm not willing to change for anyone...because fact: i'm pretty cool most of the time.

so on that note...what's your word?

80 - reese witherspoon kicked me in the ass

"Someone told me recently to live in the present but make plans and take pictures. And I am...I used to spend a lot of time thinking about the future, as if I could magically predict it if I planned enough. And then I realized, I can't." -Reese Witherspoon

i can't lie to you people. i kind of have a teeny tiny girl-crush on reese witherspoon. or maybe it's just that i'd love to be a gorgeous oscar-winning actress who's widely respected, and who also happens to be dating jake gyllenhaal. yeah, it's that, too. regardless, i read this little article on reese today and parts of it just kind of hit home with me.

as anyone who knows me will gladly tell you, i over-analyze just about everything in my life and worry in excess. i'm also a logical person, however, and i'm usually able to stop myself before it gets to the stressed out stage. and then again, i also have those times (like recently) when i just get into a funk and need to be (figuratively or literally) kicked in the ass. this happened to me over the summer, and the kick in the ass i needed came when i was reading eat pray love (by the way, why haven't you bought that book yet? i told you to do it wayyyy back in july).

on my drive home from nashville, i realized i haven't been feeling much like myself lately, and i couldn't figure out why. after reading that quote today, i realized it's because i've been focusing so much on what the future might hold, and that's scary. i may need to print out the quote i used when i started and named this blog and read it daily. so, on that note...

dear reese,

thank you for reminding me that no matter how much i freak out about the future, it's not going to change anything. thanks for the suggestion that i should be happy and content with the good things in my life right now, because when i'm 40, i won't be able to come back and have the life i have at age 26...and i'll definitely want to remember my 20s in the best possible way.

your friend,
cal

p.s. if you want to let me borrow jake gyllenhaal (and maybe a fancy dress or two) for any weddings or formal occasions in the future, i'm totally open to that possibility. i'm just sayin'...