Honesty

A friend of mine recently recommended House of Cards as my new show to binge watch over vacation. I started watching it and, although some aspects of the show make me cringe and just plain piss me off, I can't stop watching because of the curious way that the characters interact. There is a level of brutal honesty in the show that is hard to come by in real life. The characters are just as human as the people I see in real life, but they don't hide it. Honesty is hard to come by. If we were to rate humanity on some sort of moral scale, would we be quicker to judge the person that is honestly evil or the person who lies to try to come off as pure? In the end, we are all the same. If a certain person seems to be good, maybe it's only because that person is dishonest and has simply done a better job at covering up the unwanted characteristics. I recently chose to be brutally honest about my life. It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do and I suffer from the consequences even today, but, if I had lied, would I truly be living a better life or would I simply be delaying the inevitable and pretending to live a life that doesn't actually exist? There is always that one person that is brave enough to say what everyone else is thinking, but, if everyone else is thinking it, then it has already been said. We might as well be honest about it and voice it out loud. One way or another, in some shape of form, the truth will always rise to the surface; it's just a matter of when you admit it and how you respond to it.

What We Really Want

How do we know what we really want? I don't think I will ever know. The more choices I have, the more unsatisfied I feel with life. The more options I find, the worse I feel about my final choice. Will I ever be satisfied if I always have something else to choose? The truth is, the more choice we have, the less satisfied we are. I remember watching TV when I was younger and not being able to decide between two of my favorite channels on local TV. We only had about 15 channels, and yet, I felt completely satisfied deciding between my two favorite options. Now I find myself flipping through hundreds of channels and never feeling satisfied because I could have watched that, or maybe this would be better. The more I think, the less I enjoy life. I have found that the best thing I can do is just choose and move on. Choose and enjoy. No more what if's or maybe that. Just this. My choice.

Death is Actually Life

Over the past few months I have seen firsthand what it means to be in hospice. To be waiting for death, knowing it is near, and yet, I find myself realizing we are all in hospice. We are all slowly dying. My sister has said that to me many times before, but I never really knew the meaning of it. The truth is, we are all in hospice because we will all experience death. The curious thing is that no one knows exactly when their time is up. I find myself sitting next to a patient that the doctors diagnosed as terminal. They estimated the most she would last would be 3 weeks. It is now 4 months later and she is still with us. The most curious thing about hospice is that the fear of dying can sometimes be overruled by the joy of rest. Is she to be pitied for her suffering and loss of life, or is she to be envied because she will finally leave this world of chaos and enter eternal peace? The truth is, we never know what will happen. That reality is what makes every day beautiful. I can easily die before her in a car accident or with an aggressive cancer. They say she is terminal, but I say she is blessed. She lived her life to the fullest and is now surrounded by her loved ones. What truly matters is how much we enjoy this moment because we are all in hospice.

Loving Right

The truth is that we can never love right. We always mess up and cause pain instead of joy. The truth is we all fail again and again. We make promises, but break them instead of keeping them. THERE IS NO ONE WORTHY OF LOVE because no one truly knows how to love. Those we care about the most will always let us down. We disappoint them, we get angry, we betray them again and again. The truth is that all we need is love, all we have is love, because without it we would CEASE TO EXIST. We are not perfect, but we try every day to love again and again.

Natural Nature

Nature has to be natural. We are so silly to think that the synthetic is enough. Why do we settle for anything less than real? There's nothing better than a fruit freshly picked from a tree in your back yard. You can taste the beauty of life when you bite into a fruit that is chemical free. No one has more pride or a better sense of accomplishment that a small farmer who provides for his family with food that he himself reaped and sowed. When we pick out produce from a grocery store, we have no idea how much sweat and hard work it took to bring that fruit to our fingertips. We don't think about the long process, the care, the techniques that have to be put into place to ensure that we get the best fruit to eat. We don't know what it's like to work under the blazing hot sun to produce what is necessary for survival. Most kids in the United States don't even know what kind of trees or plants certain fruits and vegetables come from. I'm not even sure if a pineapple grows on a tree or a bush or on the ground. The first time I saw a coconut tree, I couldn't figure out why the coconuts were so big and green. I was amazed to see how coconuts are cut so that the top layer comes off and the bottom, brown layer that I am familiar with appears. Most of the things I eat, I will never see in their natural state. It's just not natural.

Companionship

About a month ago, my husband noticed a dirty, skinny, furry, but cute, dog outside his brother's house. The dog caught his eye because she looked quite innocent and hungry. For days this dog would wander in front of my brother-in-law's house searching for food. We slowly started to gather compassion for her as we tried to feed her, gave her water, and finally managed to pet her without her cowering away. This dog is now our pet and we have named her Pina. Pina is very mysterious to me because she is so different than our other dogs. Maybe it's because she is an indoor dog or maybe it's because she is so much smaller than a pitbull and a lab mixed with german shepard, but Pina is very interesting. One thing that all our dogs do have in common though, is that they all long for human companionship. They love being around us and my outdoor dogs cry when I haven't gone to hang out with them for days. When we go for a walk they get so excited that they behave well and sit at the front gate waiting for us to put the leash on. Pina follows me around the house when we are home alone. She even wants to follow me into the bathroom, but I don't let her because I feel too awkward. She doesn't care what I'm doing, she just wants to be next to me and sits down next to me by the computer, by the kitchen sink, outside the bathroom door, next to the couch. When she is home alone and hears me coming she jumps so high in the air it's amazing to believe her short legs can resist. Watching my dogs has made me realize that life is not meant to be lived alone. That statement is true for animals as much as humans. There's something so interesting about life that makes us want to share it with others, and no life is better lived than one full of companionship.

Our Fridge Says It All

My grandmother is in desperate need of a new refrigerator. Every time we visit her in El Salvador, we notice that the food only lasts two days in there and the coolness of the fridge is not very cold at all. On one of our trips to the stores, we showed her some new refrigerators and asked her which one she would like. She pointed at all the small ones and laughed when we showed her a two door fridge and said, "that is for a restaurant or a business, not a house!" I'm sure my grandmother would be surprised if she saw what some Americans call "refrigerators". They are enormous and they fit so much inside. I struggle to make our fridge look full, but I've notice other people with big refrigerators can't seem to find enough space in theirs. It makes me wonder....do they really eat all that food? As I was thinking about this a commercial rolled through my TV screen for Kenmore refrigerators. It showed how big and efficient the fridge is in fitting everything a human can possibly think of. It made me kind of sad, to tell you the truth, b ecause I started wondering how many people actually eat all the food they purchase. How much of that food goes in the trash? How much of that food is a luxury instead of a necessity? Eating is good, I'm not saying it isn't, but taking more than we need leaves other people with less than what they need to survive. How many Americans have over sized refrigerators leading them into obesity while my grandmother struggles with her old fridge and barely manages to feed her family? If you need all the space, then go ahead and take it, but be mindful that the earth has limited resources and we were called to share with one another. The richer on man gets, the poorer another will be.