Life Lessons from Words and the World

Hang onto your hats folks, it's going to be a bumpy ride! (Lesson #1)

So day 23 and we are sharing things we've learned that school won't teach you.  First off, whoa, loaded topic!  Books, cleverness? Yes, school is meant to teach you those things.  But as Hermione taught me, there are more important things.  However, I feel if I looked closely enough with adult eyes at all the things school can teach you outside of books the list would be quite long. There is a lot of life that goes on within a school campus but my young mind was not mature enough to grasp everything I could  have learned from it. Life is the best teacher and that can be done outside school grounds just as much as in them.  School may be able to teach you some about life, but I don't think it prepares you enough for it.  Especially considering that degree I worked so hard for, I only used about two years and doubt I will use again.

A lot of my life lessons I have learned along the way and many of the have been learned the hard way. I have learned a lot from words.  Or at least they have summed up what I learned and were put into words by someone else that said what I learned better than I could.  So that is where I will start.

"Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn." C.S. Lewis
My experiences have taught me the most. And sometimes they are hardest lessons to learn. They have shaped me and empowered me and will continue to do so, I am sure, until the day I die. In school a lot of my experiences were controlled in a setting where my mistakes couldn't really hurt me that badly.  They don't teach you that the outside world doesn't really work that way.

"I realize that life is risks.  It's acknowledging the past but looking forward.  It's taking a chance that we will make mistakes but believing that we all deserve to be forgiven." Carrie Ryan, The Forest of Hands and Teeth
Our past is a part of us, just as much as our experiences. The risks we take, the chances, they all lead us down one road over another.  We may have to take a u-turn and try again but I believe that I am forgiven.  Even if it only means I have forgiven myself.

"It's never been a perfect world.  It's never going to be. It's going to be hard, and scary and, if you're lucky, wonderful and awe-inspiring.  But you have to push through the bad parts to get to the good." Carrie Ryan, The Dark and Hollow Places
Oh, that perfect world! The one they make you believe is waiting for you once you finish all the schooling they have been force feeding you.  I think this was one of the toughest lessons I have learned.  Life isn't perfect. It is not this immaculate, beautiful fairy tale that they read to you from stories. Life is what you make of it.  There are bad moments; those shall pass.  There are great moments; those will most likely pass too.  The good moments, the content ones?! My hope looking forward is that I see the most of them and find a steadiness in them that continues to make this imperfect world seem just a little brighter.

Life is messy.  It is blessed.  It is human.  We are all imperfect people and we all live in a broken and imperfect place, but there is greatness here.  There is love and beauty and happiness. We can strive for it daily and sometimes we will fail but we go on another day and we embrace it.  Because the messy moments make the pretty ones more beautiful and the beautiful ones give us something to hope for when we are weeding through the mess.

Albus Dumbledore, Oprah and the Dalai Lama

I knew that Jenni's topic from day 4, your favorite quote and what you love about it, was going to be a tough one for me when it came to making a decision.  So... I decided not to.  Rebel, I know!  I have two books full of quotes and while there are some I love more than others it could take me hours upon hours to figure out which ones I really wanted to share. I am excited to read others posts and add great finds to my books.  

While these aren't necessarily my favorite quotes I thought an easy place to start would be with one from my favorite books first (or book series anyways).



Albus Dumbledore is one smart man!
I love the above quote but I think I love this one more, 
"The truth.  It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution." -Albus Dumbledore, via J.K. Rowling
This one speaks to me on so many levels.  I am a firm believer in what I don't know can't hurt me.  If the truth is something that won't do anything (change the situation, help the situation, or change my viewpoint) but bring hurt in the moment, then I would prefer to just be left in the dark.  The truth can be freeing but it can also be damaging and destructive.  It should never be treated with anything but caution.  The truth is words and words have power; be careful with them.

In skimming my books for more Harry Potter wisdom (which I couldn't decide between and thus decided to save for a later date), I stumbled across this one that jumped out at me.  It is fitting for my current state of mind.  

"Not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck." - Dalai Lama
At this time in my life I have been trying not to focus on the what-ifs.  I am where I am in my life and there is a reason for it.  When I think back on some of the things I had wanted, or even the things I still want but had wanted at the wrong time, I can't help but be in awe at how blessed I am that I didn't get them.  My entire life would be completely different.

Here are some more snippets of wisdom from others that I found while scrolling my time away on Pinterest (which I enjoy, wholeheartedly).  I have also gone ahead and attached my Pinterest account.  It is still a pretty unorganized mess of all my mind comes across (most things are just liked not pinned) but I am working on making it a little more spiffy~ Enjoy!

And I just had to share this because it is oh so perfectly me... 

A Thousand Lives

I have attended Hogwarts.  I have lived in Forks.  I have been to a reaping and I am Divergent. I have seen the end of the world and I have been there for the beginning.  I have walked through the Wardrobe and I have flown to Neverland.  I have felt the grief of a love lost and I have seen the grace in one restored.  I have walked in the Garden and I have been at the feet of the Cross.  I hope that I was one who wept and that I didn't join in among the scoffers.  I have lived many different lives and I plan to live many more.

The amazing thing about a story, be it fiction or non, is that we get to make a choice.  With every new story, or in some cases even a new chapter in the same one, we get to be whoever we want to be.  And the choice is ours alone.  Am I going to be a defender of the underdog? Will I be the leader of the pack or the trusty sidekick? Will I be a lone ranger and forge my own path?  Will I fight against evil and see good prevail? Will I stand firm in that decision even when goodness may not seem to be winning the battle?  Will I trust in the truth or be surprised when my friend (or an enemy) was really not what he seemed? Will I be the one who will always fight for love even if it means giving everything I have?

I have loved the quote at the top since I came across it sometime ago.  A good friend actually posted it for me recently saying it reminded her of me and the fact that reading that would make her think of me made me smile. It could be the fresh excitement of a new book that I can't put down or another visit with "an old friend",  each time I read something that truly captures me I am taken outside of myself and I am forever slightly altered.

How many lives have you lived?  Outside of your own which has been your favorite?

Words: The Host

I hadn't planned to start my first words post with quotes from The Host, mainly because I had wanted to start with one of my favorite books (though this is one I have now read twice).  However, Babe and I went to see the movie last night so I thought in honor of that I would begin the week with my favorite quotes from the book.

Movie rendition review: As books go I liked The Host.  I thought Stephenie Meyer did a much better job with writing this one then she did with Twilight (though I do probably enjoy that story line a little better).  As movies go though (just as with all books made into movies), I found it dismal.  In comparison to other book-movies I thought they did a decent job of leaving out the right parts and changing and condensing where needed.  If you haven't already seen it and were wanting to then I would recommend waiting until it comes out on DVD (though I know if someone had said the same thing to me I doubt I could have resisted seeing it in theaters).  It is worth seeing if you have read the book (I always have to watch movies of books I have read) though not worth seeing in theaters.  A lot of things are hard to convey as so much goes on inside Wanda's/ Melanie's head.  One bonus though, she has my name! And I would like to believe that if anything of the likes ever did happen to us I would be just as strong as the Melanie in this story.

Words (from Stephenie Meyer, The Host):

"This love was tricky; it had no hard-and-fast rules- it might be given freely, or earned through time and hard work, or completely and heartbreakingly unattainable."
- Love? I am not really sure if I like that word.  This description of it though is fitting.  Love takes on so many forms.  It is never and has never been what they lead us to believe when they read us fairy tales as children.  There are so many examples of people that I can think of who fit each category.  Sometimes those thoughts are bittersweet and sometimes they just are the way they are no matter how much we think we might be able to do to change them.  Where do the people you love fit in? 

"Perhaps there could be no joy on this planet without an equal weight of pain to balance it out on some unknown scale." 

- I have often felt this way but I like to think of the pain of certain situations as instances that help to make us stronger.  If anything I think pain helps us appreciate joy just a bit more than we would if we didn't have the memory of pain to remind us of what is good.

"There was no bond greater than one that required your life for anothers."

- I think this takes on a different meaning for everyone.  It strikes me now to think of the amount of people that I feel like I would give my life for.  I would like to think that I could give my life for anyone but I also know that is probably not true either.  I don't think I am selfless enough for that.  So what makes someones life more important than our own and how do we fully understand the distinction between a relationship that would mean giving all and one that doesn't?