(an extract from Warning)

Here’s to growing old in style,

P.S. I was going to post my Paris recap today, but I’m holding off until I can get a few snaps from the girls I was there with. I want to be sure I can share all the juicy details!

Image via Flickr.

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Just my favourite mantra, scrawled onto the first page of a new journal, and covered with glitter (of course).

What’s inspiring you this evening?

Update: I just Googled this mantra for the first time and this is definitely not the most literal translation, but it’s still my favourite and it speaks to me the most. :)

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They want to quit their jobs, travel the world, dive into creative projects, and sing about it online. But they can’t. Because then they wouldn’t get the promotion or the house with the white picket fence or it would interrupt their education goals…

Sorry, but I’m calling bullshit. 

Sure, there’s a certain privilege built-in to the choices I make. But if you’re reading this in a developed country with a high-speed wireless connection while you seep a double-whip frappa-whatever, I bet you’ve got the same power of choice that I do.

And babe, it is your choice. Society, your grandma, your first grade teacher, and your next-door-neighbour might be telling you have to zig. But, if you want to, you can always zag. Ultimately, you’ll get the life you choose.

Sure, you can’t have it all – or at least not all at once. Many of my friends have added more fancy letters to their names while I’ve been embracing my nomadic existence. And the comfort of a place to call my own isn’t always conducive to this gypsy lifestyle. But there’s no one path to a happy, fulfilled life.

So, make each step your own. Choose it because it’s what you want, because it lights  you up inside and makes your soul sing. And maybe later on you’ll choose something different. But you’ll never have to lament what you missed out on while you were living someone else’s choices. Because you’ll always end up with the life you deserve, the one you chose.

All of these thoughts have been swimming around in my head but, as usual, Frank Zappa said it better.

Frank Zappa portrait via Lyneth Morgan.

The post Inspiration // You Deserve It. appeared first on The Laughing Medusa.

What has been making you laugh this week? And are you a Ron Swanson fan? I’d love to hear!

xx S.

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“The one thing that is maybe young about me is I’m never bored. I’m bored when I’m with people who are boring. I’m never bored when I’m with myself, when I’m alone. I do not find life boring. If I were here by myself I’d find it interesting. There’s a billion interesting things going on. I’m bored if I can’t think. I don’t necessarily mean profoundly – I mean use my mind. It’s what I hate about the theatre. The people are talking, sometimes they’re singing, people are too close to me, it’s a hard place to think. Whereas the subway is a very good place to think. It’s never dull.”

- Frank Leibowitz, Acne Paper, Issue 14

I know Fran Leibowitz has a bit of a reputation for being a negative Nancy and a grouchy old curmudgeon, but I can’t help loving and looking up to her. She seems so certain of who she is and completely unashamed of expressing it. As self-centered as it may sound, this quote in the most recent issue of Acne Paper really struck a chord. As much as I love visiting friends, socializing, and meeting new people, sometimes my own company is exactly what I need – at least I know it will never be boring.

xx S.

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“Just” a poem to start your Sunday morning because sometimes, curled up with a big mug of coffee and your favourite blanket, you find the words you’re looking for have already been penned. You just get to soak them in, letting them light a fire in your heart, and watching as they breathe new life into your dreams…

Dance when you’re broken open.
Dance when you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance when you’re perfectly free.
Struck, the dancer hears a tambourine inside her,
like a wave that crests into foam at the very top,
Begins.
Maybe you don’t hear that tambourine,
or the tree leaves clapping time.
Close the ears on your head,
that listen mostly to lies and cynical jokes.
There are other things to see, and hear.
Music. Dance.
A brilliant city inside your soul!

–Rumi

What’s making your soul sing today? Happy Sunday!

xx S.

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The photos above are of my grandpa growing up in Jamaica – growing up I always thought it was the coolest thing that he had his photo taken with a monkey (okay, I basically still do).

My grandpa passed away six years ago – I couldn’t really believe it when I realized that today. I’ve thought about him so much lately. While I was traveling in Portugal I started having vivid dreams every night that I was talking with him and he had important things to tell me, sage advice that he wanted to pass on, but upon waking, I could never remember what it was. One night, after some strange occurrences with our bedroom door and the lights in the hallway, I even became convinced he was haunting us (he had a lifelong fascination with the afterlife and always promised to do so if it were possible).

Today I’ve felt kind of sad thinking about us having spent six years without him. In those six years I graduated high school and university, started a career, fell in and out of love (and…), travelled to faraway lands, and really just grew up in many ways (although I’m sure I still have a lot more growing to do). It doesn’t seem fair that he wasn’t there for it, even though I’m sure he’d be proud.

I spent part of this evening flipping through the guestbook from his memorial and felt overwhelmed by the number of lives he touched in really profound ways. When my dad was growing up my grandpa fixed cameras and cash registers, but in the late 70s he started a smoking cessation program that’s helped thousand of people quit smoking. In their notes, many people credited him with saving their lives, with inspiring them to be better people, and thanked him for the genuine care them. Talk about big shoes to fill.

It’s true, my grandpa was one hell of a guy. He did science experiments with me in the basement when I was little – we grew crystals in jars and built model airplanes. He taught me and all of my cousins to drive (way before we were old enough!) in his big old white Cadillac. Growing up, he’d fascinate me with stories of his childhood in Jamaica (and one of them in-part inspired my vegetarianism, but that’s a story for another day) and I loved nights when my family would sit around looking at the slides of his life before he moved to Canada. He took my brother and I to the Henry Ford Museum and on the way home we ate a picnic of sandwiches slathered an inch  thick with butter, just how he liked to eat pretty much everything. He was always ready to sit down and teach us how something worked (complete with a hand-drawn diagram) and when I became interested in public speaking he took me to his Toastmasters class to give a speech I’d written. He was just that kind of guy – curious and fun-loving and generous and kind and really funny.

It’s strange – these things we remember, and the things that we don’t. Today I found this article by one of my grandpa’s former students where he shares this quote the author remembers being a favourite of his:

“If it’s to be, it’s up to me.”

It’s a popular enough saying, but not one I personally remember hearing from my grandpa. Perhaps it just didn’t stick with me at the time, or perhaps he reserved it for his classes, but it certainly resonates with me now. Sure it’s a simple rhyme and perhaps that makes it sound trite, but isn’t basically what all of the existentialists are saying at their core?

There’s no destiny or fate. It’s not “meant to be” – it’s up to you to make it happen. In the end, our actions and choices are all we have and all we are. This is certainly how I’m trying to live – in full recognition of my own radical freedom.

All this to say, yes, I still feel weepy thinking about how much I miss him, my grandpa. But it’s felt good to realize all that he left us and that he lives on through what he taught us. To always be curious. To ask tough questions. To live a little wildly sometimes. To eat rich foods (and enjoy them!) To love freely. To be a gentle(wo)man always, in all ways. To be thoughtful of our impact on other people and the environment. To make it happen – because it’s up to you. And of course, one puff will hurt.

xx S.

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C’mon, take a listen…

“It’s absolutely stupid to do things you don’t like so that you can go on doing things you don’t like and to teach your children to follow in the same track.”

What do you think? Are you living the life you desire? I’d love to hear!

If you’re feeling particularly revved up and ready to make a change, but need a little push in the right direction I recommend checking out Jonathan Mead’s Paid to Exist, everything Danielle LaPorte’s Fire Starter Sessions (and pretty much everything she’s ever written), and then peruse Alexandra Franzen’s blog for extra inspiration.

xx S.

(video via Swiss Miss, photo via Waves of Sun)

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“You’ve lived too long in New York, I told her. There are other worlds. Other kinds of dreams. Dreams in which failure is feasible. Honorable. Sometimes even worth striving for. Worlds in which recognition is not the only barometer of brilliance or human worth. There are plenty of warriors that I know and love, people far more valuable than myself, who go to war each day, knowing in advance that they will fail. True, they’re less successful in the most vulgar sense of the word, but by no means less fulfilled.

The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you’re alive and die only when you’re dead.

‘Which means exactly what?’, she said, looking a little annoyed.

I tried to explain, but didn’t do a very good job of it because sometimes I need to write to think. So I wrote it down for her on a paper napkin and this is what I wrote: 

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget. “

- Come September, Arundhati Roy

The post >> live while you’re alive. appeared first on The Laughing Medusa.

Sometimes, the words we’re looking for have already been written …

The Journey by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

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