Happy Saturday!
My fellow readers! I hope you survived okay this week and yesterday especially. Walking home from work yesterday was hot and humid but luckily the wind blew just enough to make the 18 some minutes bearable. And today it seems to be the same case. So, if you are going outside and will be out for a good chunk of time, please, please, stay hydrated and cool as you can. Also, this shouldn't need saying but it seems to happen every year around this time, please don't keep little kids and pets inside cars when it is this hot and humid out.
I want to give a little shout out to my fellow library co-workers for surviving the first week with a new system to check in/out books, etc. I know it's still new and challenging and patience-testing, but we can do this (with the aid of chocolate). Also, it was quite the surprise to see Ciara, a past library co-worker, yesterday! I literally jumped out of my chair to go give her a (running) hug. So this week was balanced out well.
Here's the link to my latest Odyssey article: College Students During Summer, As Told By Jimmy Fallon.
Life is short. We know this. Or at least we think we know it. When we lose someone close to us and while we are in mourning, we are reminded of an absolute, one of the few things life can guarantee. Life is short. No matter what we do to make us live just a little bit longer, life finds a way. As morbid as that might seem, it's the truth.
But the tricky thing life does, or maybe we do it to ourselves, we find a way out of our sadness and continue to live with the loss. We get lost in our routine of our day to day life, and somehow we forget or take for granted the things and people we love most in our lives. And without meaning to, we let ourselves get comfortable again.
Until it happens again. Someone close to us is taken from us and in some way it remind us of our own mortality. That just like your loved one, your life can end just like their's did. And we repeat the process over again. Now, I'm not trying how to live your life. Life is short, and we can't let routine fool us into forgetting the life is short.
Rest in peace, Christina Grimmie
Happy Sunday!
Hello, fellow readers of mine. I hope you enjoyed the weekend like I did. The weather, for the most part, lent itself for people get out and breathe in the fresh air.
There is reason why I am a little late in posting this week. I made the 3 hour trip from Cedar Falls to Spencer, IA to spend the weekend with Courtney before the summer gets me too busy. We went to see a couple of movies; I got to finally meet her parents and her 3 entertaining dogs; Courtney showed me around her hometown of Laurens, IA, and much more! I want to thank Courtney, her mom and dad, and her dogs for letting me stay for the weekend! It was quite an entertaining and enjoyable time.
This post will contain some spoilers for the movie and this post is not a movie or book review.
One of the movies Courtney and I went to was called Me Before You. It was a film-adaptation of the book of the same name which was authored by Jojo Moyes. Now, we knew before going into the movie that will be sad and there would be many tears shed. After? This movie actually left what felt like a gaping hole in my heart and some food for thought.
The movie follows Will Traynor, a man turned into a sarcastically blunt and bitter quadriplegic after being hit by a vehicle, and 20-something, chatty woman, Louisa Clarke, with a quirky sense of style. Louisa is hired to essentially cheer him up and tries to do until she accidentally overhears the news that Will gave his parents 6 more months then he wanted to end his painful life through assisted suicide. She is momentarily set back but her sister inspires her to make his last months filled with bucket-list-like activities. Along the way, in my thoughts, the two opposites attract and fall in love. A part of me thinks she hoped that her efforts could help him change his mind about the assisted suicide. In the end, his mind couldn't be changed.
This is the food for thought. I am not well-researched on the topic of assisted suicide, but here are my thoughts and opinions on this. In the story of Will, his day-to-day life was a painful uphill battle and even the slightest hitch caused an enormous amount of problems. It comes back to the quality versus quantity/quantitative debate. What it comes down to is choice. It's the choice of the person and the quality of life they want for themselves. It's their choice. The loved ones of the person? It's not up to them to make it.
What they can do is support the said person, cherish them, love them. While the loved ones might disapprove and try to convince them to change their mind, the only person who has control over your body is YOU and (should) only be you. I'm not sure if this is something someone has said before or not, so, if it is, I apologize for my ignorance. Love isn't about control. And to love someone means not controlling or trying to control them, make decisions for them. Love is appreciation, not control.
Until next week,
Thought of the day
