How's it going?

How's it going? What's up? Sup? What up? How are you doing? What's new?

I would guess that the vast majority of people do not even slightly care about the answer to any of those questions when they ask. In fact most people are usually upset/frustrated when the person being asked fully replies with an honest answer about how they are truly doing.

There are few phrases in our culture that are more hallow than these. It's SO frustrating to me, especially since I completely fit into that description.

I am issuing you all (and myself) a challenge: If you feel that you must use these questions as a greeting, be ready for a real reply. If you are asked these, please think for a moment and give the person asking a real response. There are two ways it could turn out: They will appreciate the personal experience, or they will stop asking questions that they do not want the answers to.

Our culture is getting less and less personal with the increase of technological forms of communication, it is. When we ask questions that can make relationships with others more personal, let's start expecting that is exactly what is going to happen.

So, life doesn't end at 20.

Don't think me naive, but sometimes when I stop and think, my own mortality scares me a little bit. And sometimes a lot a bit. I recognize that turning 20 really isn't that big of a deal but realistically it's about a quarter of my life. I've been trying to use this as a friendly reminder not to take things for granted and to remember that I need to continue living a story that is worth telling.


This is on my mind right now because I just got back from seeing The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel with my mother a couple of hours ago. It's about seven(or so) elderly people that decide to leave England and stay at this supposedly fantastic hotel in India, only one of them ever having been there before. I won't give away much about it but there are basically about half of them that quickly adapt and take advantage of the new situation they are in and the others just stay at the hotel and have a terrible time. In the movie one of the women says that living in a new culture is comparable to swimming in the ocean, if you swim against the waves you will drown but if you go swim with them you will get to the other side.

I wish someone had drilled that into my head before I went to Costa Rica last year.

It was refreshing to see a movie that focused on the culture of any other group of people than Americans and it really made me want to go overseas again and this time immerse myself in the culture more.



Overall the movie was a fantastic one in that it reminded me that regardless of how old you are it is never to late to do anything until you die.

Oh yeah, it also reminded me that you won't get anything you don't believe that you deserve.

Clouds are beautiful

Yesterday, I was frustrated...about clouds.

I woke up early to get some shopping done and to stop at a delicious coffeeshop/bakery in Osseo, MN called Luna's Liquid Lava Lounge. It was proving to be a fantastic day, I was rather productive in the morning so I decided to go and relax at the Town Greene and read. Honestly I was just excited for some sun: I could get a little tan and soak in the beautiful rays all while reading great books. I sat down on one of the great lawn chairs out there and started reading and almost right away the sun went behind the clouds and it actually got rather cold. It was really frustrating because I wanted to be outside and relax like I used to last summer.

I ended up reading in the library and then going home. Later that afternoon I looked out a window and saw the sun was beaming down on my backyard and there did not seem to be many clouds in the sky. It was finally my chance to read in the sun, woo! I quickly grabbed my book and set up a chair in my backyard, took my shirt off to get some color and started reading. About 5 minutes later the largest cloud anyone has ever seen slowly crept in front of the sun. It got really cold but I decided to just wait it out and saw the cloud did have an end to it. The sun did end up shining on me again and the cloud went on it's way, unfortunately I only had about 10 pages of my book left.

Throughout the day I was thinking in the back of my mind that I love clouds but I was frustrated because today was the day I wanted to enjoy the sun. After I was done with my book (Love Does by Bob Goff) I started really thinking about what I was getting frustrated at. I was mad that it was a cloudy day because I wanted sun. I decided that I was thinking about life all wrong. We can't spend life being frustrated that things out of our control are not the exact way we want them to be. Honestly, I have always loved clouds because they are so pretty! I was texting my friend and mentioned that I almost missed how beautiful the clouds looked yesterday because I was not being grateful for what I was given and I really liked her response. She said "people often forget what we are given...if days were always sunny we would get bored and take them for granted." It is really that simple. How much would we treasure amazing things if we were given them whenever we wanted? What would be amazing about them anymore? When we are exposed to truly amazing things too often they become just ordinary.

I challenge anyone reading this to wake up tomorrow and focus on spending the day being grateful for what you are given. Really think about this. Also if there is something that you wish was different about that day, flip it around and think about what part of your day you would hate if it was not exactly how it is and BE GRATEFUL.

When we are grateful for every part of our day it forces us to smile even though clouds are blocking the sun. We smile because being grateful reminds us that honestly, clouds are beautiful.

It's not really that hard to believe

Usually when people look back on a year of their life they start out by using the phrase "It's hard to believe that..." followed by things like "... year is already over!" or "...we're already !" or even "...we only have years left at !" 


I start to wonder if the reason that we start remiscing by stating that it's hard to believe that we are where we are is because we don't remember all of the things that happened that previous year. 


For example, I was talking to a friend at the end of this last school year and I caught myself saying "It's hard to believe that I'm going to be a junior next year!" And then I stopped and thought about it and realized that it's actually not hard to believe at all. This year was such an amazing year and it felt so fantastically long that I'm more surprised that I'm not going to be a senior next year if anything. I was accepted into the Wartburg Choir, participated in Christmas with Wartburg, was a part of hosting the first ever Ultimate tournament at Wartburg, met and became friends with a crazy guy who proved to be an excellent roommate, became closer friends with a few fantastic individuals, maintained incredibly close friendships with people who live in a different state than me 9 months out of the year, went on an amazing week long midwest tour with Choir, managed to stay on the Dean's list for another year, got to hang out with my friend Ethan in Chicago, was voted to be a captain of the Ultimate team for next year, and so many other things. I can't honestly say that after all of those things happened that it is even slightly hard to believe that I am starting my second half of college next year. 




I remember that I always used to be incredibly excited for what was coming next that I would never really treasure what I had right now. I'd be so excited for summer starting as early as March or April that I would stop living as fully as I could throughout those months. I am happy because I have finally reached a point where I am just happy for whatever is happening at the moment. This is something that I plan to focus on this summer, being completely present wherever I am and fully soaking in everything that I experience this summer. I am reading a book by someone who used to be the youth director at my church back in the day. She talks about how being fully present is such an important thing and that when she hears from people that say they don't belong somewhere she wonders how much time they invested in trying to belong. I regret that I have been in many situations in my life that I haven't been fully present and I recognize that it's something that I need to work on. Due to this, if anyone happens to call or text me this summer and I don't reply it's either because I am at work or simply with a friend hanging out. 


That's all for now, I'm attempting to keep my posts less rambling and more focused on one thing but we'll see how that goes. 


It's really not that hard to believe that life is going exactly how it should.

I'm a blogger!

I decided that I wanted to start reflecting on my daily life. Here we go.


Natura Est Vita - it's the name of my blog. I was trying to come up with a name that could represent myself well. I think this works. Natura est vita translates from Latin to "Nature is life." The name tells two key things about me.

I love languages, especially speaking them aloud. Also the fact that many languages spoken in the world have roots in Latin which is why it has been my favorite language for awhile, even though I can't speak it. Well, I can speak it aloud when reading or singing, but I don't know much of what I'm saying. There are so many types of languages but after studying English, Spanish, various programming languages, and even a bit of ASL, I have learned that they all share a lot of things in common. It makes me believe that so many of things that we all think are different about different cultures are really deceiving.

The actual words are also fairly representative of me because I thrive on nature. Not to be mistaken with the immediate mental image that I am by any means someone who spends all their time outdoors or was a boy scout or anything like that. However, I absolutely love nature and find that it is the most beautiful thing in the world. I used to always ride my bike and when I would be riding west in to the sunset I would see what the definition of true beauty is.



So I'm a blogger now. Neat!