Week in Review: Blogging on Life

I often think about blogging…I write things in my head.  I write things in my heart, but I seldom (in case you haven’t noticed) write them here.  Yet this week, this week I am.

I am writing, that is.

I originally selected to attend the college I did because I was going to major in theater. I don’t do much with theater anymore, but the dramatic is part of me.  I love people and am typically described by words like “gregarious,” “social,” or the like- yet there is this part of me that sees life in the color of dreams.

Take for instance last month when I went to the new Guthrie Theater for the first time (check it out at: http://www.guthrietheater.org/). I went with a good friend from college, Kate. And while I was there I cried.

I cried because of the beauty of life. I cried because when I looked at the people I realized how truly beautiful they are. I cried because the experience of humanity is one we share. I cried because I was alive.

These moments- where life moves slowly and there is a gleaming halo surrounding the lights- these moments hit me, but more than that- they stay with me; they define me.

I had moments like that again this week. I was on a recruiting trip to Indiana.  I flew into Ft. Wayne.  I know many would say that Indiana doesn’t rank high on their top-100 scenic vistas to visit, and I understand this sentiment.  But for some reason, in-between my plane switch in Detroit (which, by the way, has a crazy tunnel with psychedelic noise… which is not at all conducive for lowering anxiety as you run to catch your next flight), I found that literary heart again.  I watched the sunbeams hit the golden wheat and I realized why some people live their lives in Northern IN. I wondered their stories and I fell in love with the simplicity of life in all its beauty and mundane reality.

I was just about to wake up from that dream when I went running in Huntington and two dogs tried to attack me, but then the sun set over the golden wheat as I boarded a jet that I had to climb stairs to enter (which, made me feel like a movie star), after a nice Indiana fellow had given me directions to the gas station (I had almost forgotten to fill my rental car), and I sat on an airplane with an Orthodox Jew, a man old enough to be my dad who tried to flirt with me, and a Ft. Wayne-turned-Italian photographer with impressive horn-rimmed glasses who passed me in the same psychedelic tunnel when I again arrived in Detroit and commented that he recognized me from my sparkly shoes and talked to me for a minute on the moving walkway (which are, crazy things indeed).

I re-entered life in the Upper-Midwest that night in the airport, watching us bustle around, laughing with the child who played by the water fountain, and observing a young outdoorsy guy snap pictures in the middle of the airport of the fountain rays, slightly hidding behind a pillar, wondering if a guy like him would like a gal like me. And I drank my non-coffee drink that cost more than I expected, and smiled over the rim as the steam escaped, and I laughed and smiled again as a man waiting for the ExpressTram looked at my cup and asked me, “What would we do without Starbucks?” “Many things,” I could have replied, but didn’t. And I wondered again at our fleeting lives; the brevity and the beauty that lies therein. If only I will take the time to listen.

I am alive. I am alive. We are alive. I exist because you exist and as I enter your story, mine becomes more rich. This week my heart is full of joy. Yes, this part gregarious, part studious, part artistic heart today is full of joy.