LIVING

"I've just had an apostrophe."
        "I think you mean an epiphany."


I should really stop quoting movies in all my blog posts. My roommates are rubbing off on me.


Anyway, the point is, I had a sort of epiphany a couple nights ago.


I was walking home from school down the east side of campus. Leaves carpet the ground, and I deliberately make a point to NOT walk on the sidewalk, just so I can drag my feet through the leaves like a snow-plow until they're piled up to my knees. Today, I noticed the grounds crew cleaned most of it up. Boo.


Back to the story. So I was walking home from work, and I crossed over to the other side of the street. I walked past the Wilkinson Student Center and passed by all the incredibly......interesting......people who sit at the bus station every afternoon. As I paused at the cross walk, I turned and watched a biker struggle to make it up the huge, steep hill behind the Wilk. I laughed audibly as a memory from last February popped into my head when my best friend made me piggy-back his 175 lbs up that hill, and I had bruises on my hips the next morning to prove it. But then I made him piggy-back me down and back up three flights of stairs. I thought about that and chuckled out loud, drawing looks from those standing at the crosswalk. I crossed at the crosswalk, and skipped back up onto the curb in a good mood for no reason at all. Smiling at strangers and everything.


And that's when I thought, "I really like my life."


You know that quote that says something about how, if everyone put their problems in a pile, and we were told we could choose from it, we would immediately grab ours back? Well, I thought about that, and realized I would apply that to my life. I LIKE my life. If I could choose someone else's life, I would still choose mine. Sure, there are some hard things, but I want to find out the result of those hard things. If my life was a movie, I would want to watch it. No one else probably would, but I would. Because it's full of the things that are ME. (Is this sounding conceited? It's not meant to...) It's just all the things that interest me. It has everything I LOVE. Everything I hate. Everything that matters to me. Everything that's hard for me. Everything that I enjoy doing. All my longing and dreams for the future. All my....me-ness.


I want to do the things I do. I want to be who I am. I want to live MY life.


Why?


Because it's awesome. And I LIKE it.


The Man Upstairs really knows what He's doing.


*Post Script: And thank you to those who have served our country so that I am able to continue living my life. Happy Veteran's Day.