Remarkable (A Post That Quickly Got Wildly Out of Hand)

We live in this world.  It is huge.  It is varied.  And on it are all these people who aren’t me.  And, not being me, they all think in slightly (or not-so-slightly) different ways from me.  And, thinking in slightly different ways from me, they come up with ideas for things I never would have come up with on my own.  But sometimes I read about these things or I hear about these things and I get really inspired to do these things or to learn about these things, because so many of the things are just so amazing!  And who doesn’t want to be a part of something amazing?

I was over reading on Truth and Cake the other day and she’d been to see this speaker, Elie Weisel, who I’m sure I should have heard of, but hadn’t, and one of the things he said that’s been sticking in my head and that pretty much blows me away is, “Do something remarkable with every moment.”  Every moment!?  Seriously?  Can you imagine the lives we’d live if we did this?  The world we’d live in if everyone did this?  I work hard to do something remarkable once a week; it takes willpower, and even then, “remarkable” is probably a word that only I might use for a lot of the stuff I do.  But every moment.  I don’t even know what that would look like.

The Best of Intentions

I know a lot of people have very negative feelings about Mondays and to be honest, yes, when my alarm goes off at 6:15, I do too.  But I also kind of love Mondays.  A Monday always feels like a fresh start.  Whatever went wrong or seemed insurmountable last week will be easily fixed this week.  I have had the weekend to refresh and this will be the week that I get my life together.

Gotta Have Goals

The first step to having achievements is to have goals.  Then, when you meet those goals, you can feel that you have achieved something.  Yes, it is possible to achieve things without planning to achieve them.  But it’s not as satisfying.  Without the goal first, you might not even recognize your achievements as achievements:  “Sure I can speak four languages, but it doesn’t really count because I was raised in Switzerland.”

People who are better.

I think I’m pretty self-aware.  I know my weaknesses and I know my strengths.  Being extremely competitive, in order to keep liking myself, I have usually gravitated toward situations where I get to use my strengths and avoid my weaknesses.  I figured this one out when I was pretty small.