Stop and Smell the Flowers

I've been thinking a lot about the different slices of life that have caught my attention throughout my lifetime, and ones that I am continuously fascinated by time and time again are the stories I hear about people stopping to smell the flowers. I cannot even count the number of times in my life where I have been in such a rush that I forget the things going on around me. I've also had many moments in my life where I've learned to put the hurry aside and stop to soak in my surroundings.

I came across a video that a friend of mine had posted a link to on facebook a few weeks ago that I haven't been able to get out of my head since I first saw it. I urge you

 all to- stop and hear the music. I realize that stopping to smell the flowers is a figure of speech, but when I saw this video I put a new perspective on things. It's understandable to not put aside your daily hurries all the time for things out of the ordinary, but my heart goes out to violinist Joshua Bell. If people can't even turn their heads to look at where beautiful extraordinary music is coming from, what is it really going to take us to stop from living in such a fast paced society?

I hope that there are times in my life that no matter what I'm doing, that some days, I can simply put my rush aside and find that if we stop for just a moment, we might find the most beautiful things have been right there all along. 

Spur of the Moment

Another Friday afternoon and I was again relieved to be done with classes. I was sitting in my room talking to my roommate about how long our to-do lists were and how low our will to cross a few of these things off were. If there are two things you should know about my roommate and I, it would be that we are constantly rearranging our room, and we tend to act on impulse on a regular basis. I was talking to my sister and she asked if we wanted to buy a futon. Obviously this caught our attention. We got the price down to $50, but the only problem was we needed to go get it tonight, in Columbus, and it was already 6 o'clock. We looked around our cramped dorm room and realized that there was probably no room to fit another pair of shoes, let alone a futon. This obviously didn't seem to matter, we couldn't pass up this great of a deal. 

So first we had to drive from Marietta to Newcomerstown, over an hour away to pick up my roommate's Dad's truck. Then onto Columbus to pick up this futon. We finally get there and need about two and a half more inches in the bed of the truck to fit this futon in. We didn't let this stop us and continued to try to twist and turn this futon until it was finally resting securely. We used a plethora of bungee cords and ropes to strap it down and hope that it wouldn't move. We stopped at my house in Columbus to say hi to my parents, and despite what the smart thing would have been to do, got back into the car to come back to Marietta. I stared at the bed of the truck probably half of the time it took to get back to school to make sure we weren't losing the futon. I remember looking at my roommate, who knows I am usually paranoid and asking her that if this futon flew off this truck and crashed through someones windshield if we would go to jail for Man Slaughter. 

Finally, we arrived at school safely  at 2 o'clock in the morning. We somehow perfectly fit the futon through 3 sets of doors, and then had to rearrange our rooms and re-bunk them so that our futon would fit. We were exhausted, but as soon as our heads hit our pillows it didn't even cross our minds. The next morning her parents came to Marietta to take the truck back. They took us out to lunch at a local restaurant, although we were extremely tired, we were enjoying ourselves. I was looking around and noticed that all the employees were wearing black t-shirts with different quotes on the back. I looked at two of the different servers whose backs were facing me. The first one read "Go the extra mile, it's never crowded", and the second "You never know when you're making memories".

I smiled looking at the back of the shirts and thought to myself that despite the crazy ideas that are constantly popping in my head, and although we probably weren't the two most logical human beings on Friday night, that those are the kinds of things that I'll always remember. That maybe sometimes if people stopped following such a tight routine that I know myself are guilty of, that some of the best things can come of it. 

Where'd All the Good People Go?

I'll have to admit, a week ago when I was told i would have to start and uphold a blog for one of my classes, I was nervous. I'm nervous a lot you could say, but this made my anxiety sky rocket. I sat in a classroom filled with people who knew exactly what they wanted to write about the minute we received the assignment description, and there was me, frozen. I love writing, don't get me wrong; when I was younger that's what I wanted to be when I grew up. My dreams have since then changed, and I didn't know what I could write about to keep people interested, and how comfortable I felt putting my own thoughts and ideas out onto the web.

All week long I continued to think of the random things that interest me that I could blog about. I was walking back to my dorm after successfully completing my first week of classes and listening to my iPod like I normally do. I was relived to be done, even if it only was for a weekend. The first week always drags on, everyone is focused on getting where they need to be without thinking about anyone else. I had my fair share of busy bodies, classroom guidelines, and more syllabi than a girl ever needs in her life. I looked up from my usual stare at my feet to see a girl staring at the map of my campus. She looked at me, and I took my headphones off.

"Excuse me, I'm sorry to ask you, but are you a student here?" She asked me, in the nicest voice I had heard in a while. I told her I was, and she pointed to the Fine Arts Center and asked if it was the Science building. I told her it wasn't and showed her the fastest way to get to where she need to be. With the biggest smile on her face, she put her hand on my shoulder and thanked me. She explained that she has a job interview, and if it wasn't for me, she would have gotten lost, and couldn't thank me enough. I told her it was really not a problem, and wished her the best of luck.

I walked away and couldn't help but smile myself over the niceness this stranger had just shown me. I genuinely hoped she would get the job based on the thirty-second conversation I had with her. I might have helped her get to her interview, but in that moment she reassured me that some people really are truly kind, and lately our world has been missing a lot of that. I put my headphones back on to hear a song I hadn't heard in a while.

"How many train wrecks do we need to see, before we lose touch of, we thought this was low, it's bad getting worse, so where'd all the good people go?"

I was listening to "Good People" by Jack Johnson. I realized that there are little slices of life that we all have that are there to get us through some days. I then decided this is exactly what I could spend my time writing about for my blog, and other than that, my whole life talking about. The random acts of kindness, and small things that happen during the largest scheme of our daily routines that bring smiles to our faces. And so begins, my slice of life.