The Sunshine Scatterer Who Sees the Clouds

I've always considered myself an optimist. I'm one of those annoying people that seems to have too much energy and excitement for life.
When it comes to sad stuff in life though, I like to pretend that it doesn't exist. World hunger? Poverty? Politics? In my mind, those problems disappear when I don't think about them. I can just skip through life singing high school musical and pretending that I'm not growing up, I don't have to go to college and leave my friends behind, and I definitely don't have to get a job.
I've never seen a problem with my "optimism" until my friend Ambeajaf gave me a book. I won't talk too much about the book because I want to discuss it in detail on this blog after I've finished reading, but I do want to talk about how it's changed my perspective on optimism. The book discusses how my generation is often refusing to grow up; we're scared of what the future may bring and don't want to have to deal with the pains of adulthood. We're pretending like we don't have to become an adult, that living in our mom's basement for another decade is totally fine.
There's lots of lessons I'm learning from this book, but the first  one I've learned is that optimism is NOT denial. Optimists don't just pretend problems don't exist and think happy thoughts instead. Optimists know and understand the terrible problems and sadnesses that are in  the world today. AND THEY ARE STILL HAPPY! That is the real beauty of optimists. They aren't daunted by the vast quantity of the world's problems, they aren't overwhelmed by how many thing are wrong with the world. They acknowledge that problems exist and then do something to stop the problems. They are the believers, the hopefuls, the dreamers, and most importantly, the doers of humanity.
I was much humbled by this realization. How did I think I was going  to make a difference in the world around me if I don't acknowledge that there is something wrong with it in the first place?
I'm working, now, on facing my future with more faith than fear. I'm working on not letting my problems overwhelm me into a denial of their existence. I'm working on living life happy, with a full realization of how many problems and sadnesses are in the world today. I'm hoping that by doing so, I can make more of a difference in people's lives. I can first recognize problems, then believe  that there is a solution, then go find out what the solution is. Recognize. Hope. And do.
I'll end with some song lyrics again. (I can't help myself! I love music way too much). This song is called "Walking in Sunlight".
"It's a beautiful day, even though it's dark out there. Got the sun on my face; I take it with me everywhere. And it warms my heart that's beating, it comes from believing, and it's a beautiful, beautiful feeling! It's like walking in sunlight when the whole worlds covered in rain clouds, walking in sunlight: finding the truth and living it out loud. Here, when you know what's right it's like walking in sunlight. Sunlight."
I wish you all the best luck with becoming true optimists, with recognizing, hoping, and doing. Go be awesome. :)

Home is Wherever You Are

I'd like to start with lyrics from one of my favorite songs, "Home" by Jack Johnson.
"Home is wherever you are, if there's love there too."
I've always been a homebody. I like the sameness and comfort that home provides; there's nothing comparable. That's why for me, travel is bittersweet. I love seeing new places, trying new foods, and just expanding the world I live in, but I always miss whatever and whomever I leave behind.
I'm beginning to learn, however, that I cannot just call one place home. I have a home wherever in the world I can find love. What makes home special is the people who live in it, not the things. And there are people that love me all over the world, from Finland to Hawaii to Arizona and everywhere in between. When I'm with the people I love, it doesn't matter where I am. I am home.
I spent the Fourth of July weekend at a cabin with a bunch of mostly strangers I'm not exactly related too... But sort of an (it's complicated. Long story). At first I felt a bit nervous being plunged head first into a foreign family gathering. Then I met the people I was to be staying with. It didn't matter that my last name was Douglass and theirs wasn't. They treated me the same. They played pranks on me and pulled my seat out from under me. They cooked food for me and stuffed me full of homemade chocolate chip cookies and packaged mint Oreos. They played card games with me and shared their favorite chick flicks. They made me crack up with jokes like  "Elizabeth! That's so rare!" and played beanbag toss with me.  They made me feel at home. I have all kinds of stories and memories to carry with me now!
I'm back from the cabin now, but I left a piece of my heart there, and I plan on keeping it there for a while.
I'll end with some more song lyrics, this time by the amazing Mindy Gledhill.  All too soon, "I'm gonna leave this nest and give my best to the place where I grew up." I'll be off on my own, and my house will no longer be the same. But my home? Home will never change. Home will be with me, wherever I go, wherever there are people who hold the keys to the front door that is my heart.

How is your home shaped by the people you share it with?

Thank You For that Subway Sandwich

It's that time of year again: time to write in yearbooks!

Yearbook writing could quite possibly be the most intimidating genre to write. Signing a yearbook is a tall order. The writer has to:

1.) condense a whole year's worth of experience, emotion, and craziness into one short paragraph

2.) do this without sounding cheesy or cliche

3.) not smudge the ink in the process

The process of writing in yearbooks can be tedious and exhausting. It involves trying to find something meaningful to say to people you barely know who ask you to sign their yearbook. It involves walking that fine line between genuine and cliche when composing your message. It involves gerrymandering out space on an already-full-of-signatures page for a signature of your own. It is a hand-cramping, ink-smearing, mind-bending work. Whatever you write will remain permanently scrawled on the yearbook's pages and looked at decades after it is written. It will be read by future spouses and children, scrutinized for use of "old people slang", and proofread for spelling errors. In short, yearbook writing is intimidating. 

As my English teacher reminded us today, this is why it is important to take yearbook writing seriously. Some people don't; they use their block of white space to insult people, cuss out their friends, or simply write lots of meaningless fluff in giant lettering to fill the page. These signatures may say a lot on the surface, but they are hollow on the inside. You only remember these remarks because they are annoying, inappropriate, or embarrassing.
On the flip side, good comments in yearbooks can have high impacts. One of my favorite yearbook signatures this year was "Thanks for that subway sandwich". This statement, which has no meaning to anyone reading this, has deep personal meaning for me. Just a few words resulted in a change of perspective. This is the power of yearbook writing: you have the opportunity to leave an impression, good or bad, on the reader. How you will be remembered in ten, twenty, thirty years is in part contingent on the five or six sentences you scrawl in Sharpie in a yearbook. My point? Craft those five or six sentences wisely. 

Remember When?

I decided I wanted to post a little poem that I wrote about one of my best friends. The poem was published in our school literary magazine, but I want to post it to my blog as well. It's about life, about leaving, and about remembering. 

Remember when we first met?

You were so full of questions, the pointless kind

That drove our teacher up the wall.
In desperation, she sat me, the fountain of answers, next to you

I answered your questions, the sincere and the surprising and the straight up stupid

But the most important answer I ever gave you

Was a yes, a yes to your plea for a forever friendship

Remember when we went to sixth grade camp?

And we made up secret code names for everything.

And there was that one time when

I accused everyone of stealing my socks

Until I eventually found out that

I was sitting on top of them

Remember when we went through the Harry Potter years?

When you would set up a shrine to Harry Potter

Every day in fifth period

Complete with Harry Potter playing cards and posters and replica wands

You had a lofty goal of reading the entire series 777 times.

Pretty sure you’re still working on that goal.

Remember when we had to endure endless teasing in second period?

You dropped a banana (stolen from the teacher) on the floor in class

I got the blame (because I always got the blame)

As punishment, I had to go cut grass with a pair of safety scissors

To feed the class turtle

I came back wet, because that was the one day

Rain had broken through the dryness of our Californian drought

Remember when we walked barefoot down the beach?

With big plastic bags we collected trash

And talked about life and college and leaving

I don’t want to leave. I want what’s here and now forever…

But. I was then, and am now, consoled by the knowledge

That between us, it will never really be goodbye

As long as we can still

Remember when?

A Little Food for Thought

I love food.
Okay, I know, seriously, who doesn't? I just had to get that statement out of my system before I could move on to a more substantial topic, namely my favorite food. My favorite food is pizza. Thin crust, deep dish, three cheese or three meat, it doesn't matter: I love it. I love it at parties, where everyone clamors over each other to grab a hot fresh slice from a box. We never need plates, just our hands and a napkin (if we're feeling fancy). I love getting individual pizzas too, the kind that definitely don't look individually sized. I even loved the pizza my friends and I ordered in Nashville, Tennessee, a ten inch pizza for $25 that had slices so small as to be personally offensive.
The great part about food, though, is not the pleasure of the taste buds. It's the pleasure of the soul. Food brings people together! Food can serve as a catalyst for conversations with strangers or a medium for making memories with friends. In whatever form in takes, it connects people. That's why whenever possible, I don't eat in solidarity, but surrounded by the company of friends and family or even random strangers. Here's a short peak at my daily eating escapades:
My brother and I always eat breakfast together. We are the lone souls up at five thirty every morning, trying to glean some sort of satisfaction from our twin bowls of plain Cheerios. We never talk. We don't have to. It's our comfortable silence, broken only by the occasional "pass the Grape Nuts", that brings us together.
Second period is truly a work of art when it comes to food for the soul. We all eat during class. Most days, you can catch us in the midst of a giant food swap, passing around people's lunch bags and cheap Styrofoam containers of microwaved noodles that sell at school for a dollar. Even our teacher usually gets in on the action! He brings food for us to try, everything from homemade cornbread to Wheat Thins to Vietnamese sweet bread. The shared food gives the class a casual, fun atmosphere. You can tell we're all real friends because we're not afraid to steal each other's food.
Dinner? Well, that's something special in my house. We always have family dinners together. Long after everyone has scraped their plates clean of Costco broccoli kale salad and homemade bread, we sit and savor the moment. We talk, we laugh, we reenact the latest studio C skits, we just enjoy each other's company. It's the one time of the day where the whole family is together, all electronics are off, and we can talk and have a good time.
Food is especially good for the soul around the holidays. The ridiculous amount of good food that accompanies Thanksgiving serves to remind me of all I have been blessed with: good food and good company to share it with. And Christmas is the same story.
When I started writing this post, I was kind of like, where am I going with this? Am I just feeling really hungry right now and all my thoughts are thus centered on tacos and pad thai and pizza? As I wrote, however, I was reminded that for many people, communal meals are not the norm. Most people don't have time to eat one sit-down meal all day, let alone hold regular family dinners. The world's a better place, however, when we stop to enjoy our food with the people we love.
Next time you gather around the dinner table (and I hope that next time is very soon!), take a moment to savor not just the fullness of your stomach but the fullness of your heart.
Feel free to post how food feeds your soul.

Teacher, Teacher!

Every kid has a dream. As a Kindergartner, mine was to be an elementary school teacher. I liked to play school with my stuffed animals, who would dutifully listen as I expounded the complexities of counting to 100. I dreamed of the projects I would have my students do, and I started a mental list of things I would do when I was a teacher
I may not be a Kindergartner anymore, but I still want to be an elementary school teacher. There's many reasons why, but the main reason is that I love little kids! There's something captivating about their innocence, their purity, their energy, their simplicity. I can relate, as I'm definitely a kid at heart. I can think of no better way to spend the rest of my life than by working with kids, and getting paid to do so.
I also love teaching! I've had the opportunity to teach in church, in school, and through tutoring programs, and I've loved every minute of each opportunity. I like to watch the light of understanding that illuminates kids' eyes when they understand a topic. I also love the creativity, the fun, and the intimacy that teaching allows. I cannot wait to become a teacher!
That being said, I cannot understand why so many people give me flack when I tell them my career goals for the future. I've been told, "You're smarter than that job" and "you can do better." I've been accused of wanting to take an easy route through college and have been told to pick a different career. I have heard it all.
...and it infuriates me! There's nothing easy about being a teacher. The job takes a special skill, patience, and tolerance that not everyone has, and it requires expertise in multiple areas and professions. Teachers are janitors, cleaning up after the snotty nosed dirty kids who traipse through their classrooms. They are surrogate mothers, caring for their students' mental, intellectual, and emotional needs. They are counselors, handing out free advice to anyone willing to listen. They are innovators, finding brilliant new ways to teach children of different capacities and backgrounds. They are scientists and readers and writers and mathematicians. They mentor, they discipline, they grade, they organize, they clean, they sacrifice, they LOVE! And not everyone can do all that.
Sure, the aerospace engineers and the neurosurgeons of the world may claim that teachers have it easy: they get summers off, have relatively short working days, and their job doesn't require much complex technical knowledge. But those scientists are so wrong. I'd honestly like to send them to teach first grade and see if they survive the ordeal. Maybe afterwards they will realize that teachers matter. Lawyers and doctors may be the people that make headlines, but teachers are the ones that save lives and change the world, one kid at a time.
I wish people would congratulate me when I tell them my dreams. I wish I could proudly say "I want to be a teacher!" instead of feeling embarrassed or ashamed of my "low goals". I wish there was no stigma attached to teaching. Adults tell kids from the cradle upward that they can be whatever they want to be; it's about time that they start practicing what they preach. Next time someone tells you they want to be an elementary school teacher, tell them to go for it. Tell them there are few jobs as noble and as important as that of a teacher. And believe it when you say it.

Life Is Beautiful

It's a warm Sunday afternoon in February, and I'm sitting on the bricks in front of church waiting to be picked up. I'm wearing my Sunday best, looking neat and, I hope, pretty. I sit with my ankles crossed, my skirt pulled carefully over my knees. I'm leaning back on my hands, and I toss my head to the sky to soak up some sun. It's such a peaceful, perfect, day, I can't help but smile.
I pull out my phone and scroll through my Church playlist until I find my favorite song on the list, "Come Thou Font" sung by Jessica Frech. I turn up the volume then let the music fill the air and fill my soul. The simple tune puts me at peace. I am once again struck with wonder at how beautiful the world is and how blessed I am.
Now back up a few days to Friday. It was one of those days where I was so tired that my contacts wouldn't stick to my eyeballs, so I was stuck wearing my glasses all day, which steadfastly refused to stay on my nose. I wore my hair in a messy bun, the kind of bun that sags too much to pass for the tousled chic look that's so popular these days. During second period, I was caught red handed doing econ homework instead of environmental science. I self exiled myself underneath the table (but that's another hilarious story for another day) and barely got through the rest of the period. Overall, I was a mess.
In hindsight, Friday's problems seem so trivial, and Sunday's blessings seem so eternal. What does it matter in the long run if I've got messy hair or messy grades? I'll get a clean slate to try again tomorrow. I can do whatever I want with my life. This upcoming month, I'm going to try to have more Sundays and less Fridays, more gratitude and less griping.
The song that I love so much, "Come Thou Font", comes to my mind again. The lyrics say "Come thou font of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy praise. Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise." I cannot put it better. As we all seek to find happiness in our lives, we should remember all that we already have to be happy about. And then thank the people and the Person who makes it all possible.

Life is beautiful, because I make it so. Open your eyes, and life will be beautiful for you too.