Thursday, September 15, 2005

What I've Learned...

My friend K celebrated her birthday at a bar in town tonight. Juje (with whom I carpooled) said it was like she was holding an open house -- K looking pretty hawt decked out in her colorful and festive dress, receiving wave after wave of well-wishing friends, socializing, mingling. Only, at a bar. Pretty cool.

But what I found even more cool was the book that was circulating -- a journal of fine hand-pressed paper with a brightly colored cover -- which K was requesting we fill with notes of the things we've learned in life.

It's always tricky to come up with something to write that's going to stick around for a while, like a BFF message in a yearbook, or a note in a wedding guestbook, even a birthday card. It'd be nice to say something meaningful. Not too wordy, not to trite. Maybe clever, hopefully a little funny. But it shouldn't sound like you had to pull teeth to come up with something, which of course is like saying "don't think of an elephant." (sorry, it's just on my brain today. I didn't even link to it!)

At least that's how it is for me. I can't say how other people approach it.

But anyway, I liked the idea of writing down what I've learned, so I figured I'd post the things I wrote today, and maybe I'll post others as they come to me. (Yeah, it'd be like... I'd think of something and then I'd write about it on the interweb. Like... a web-log... what a crazy idea!)

Ok, we'll try not to be cynical for a few moments so I can type these in, so here they are:

No matter how much you plan for the unexpected,
there's a reason it's called the unexpected...

joy and wonder are most often found in the spaces between the big stuff that you plan to do.

beauty is most often found in the little things that you weren't looking for.


An ounce of gold is not worth an ounce of time.

sometimes life's lessons come after dinner.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why not put in an Einstein quote - especially because everyone wants to sound as smart as Einstein when they write in a card, yearbook or other keepsake. Here's my favorite Einstein quote - I often put it as the signature on my emails:


Not everything that can be counted counts.
And not everything that counts can be counted.

Cheers (I said that, not Einstein)

tallasiandude said...

Because it's more meaningful when it's your own words. It's the same reason I'm not fond of Hallmark cards (or any other preprinted message, really).

Besides, I can never remember quotes. I mean, I don't think I even got my own quotes right.