Days 218 - 220: Always love

for Wednesday, January 18, 2012
I have been invited to write an article for publication in a scholarly journal! I submitted an abstract a few weeks ago, and I have been invited to proceed. This is very exciting. I am so grateful for reminders that my research is interesting, that people want to hear what I have to say, and that I have a brain.

for Thursday, January 19, 2012
Chance is such a beautiful thing. Today I found this stuck in my Netflix.



I sent it back on its way of course. But I wondered about the letter writer, about the letter recipient...it was just a beautiful little window into lives I will never know about, and that made me happy, to think of people loving and living and sharing this planet with me. How many stories there must be in the world! I want to know them all.

for Friday, January 20, 2012
Today was a great day. Not only did I kill it at work, I got a phone call from Northwestern, from one of my idols, inviting me to come visit Northwestern as a prospective PhD candidate. They are inviting 6-7 of us, their top candidates, to come visit, and they will select the final four from there. It was so unexpected. And so lovely. Such a beautiful and affirming reminder that when you put yourself out there, you may get rejected a bit, but something will always open up.

I was talking to someone recently who told me that he felt guilty, that with every failed romantic relationship he felt himself closing off. Like he takes out his vengeance and anger on the next person, for what the previous person did. And love becomes even more remote a possibility. This made me sad, for all the joy he is blocking out of his life, for all the beautiful options he will never know or experience.

I am not like this, I do not think. I want to believe in every beautiful thing, and I feel like if I let the bad experiences ruin me, that somehow they will have won...I never want to stop believing in the possibility of love, in the joy of beauty, in the gorgeous wonder of the world. That would be such a loss.

There is always always always beauty, if you look hard enough. There is always always always light at the end of the tunnel. There is always love. Always.