A large part of becoming an adult is training your emotions, but a good many people end up simply training them away.  Do not follow the crowd towards thinking that emotions are in themselves inappropriate, something you are immature for not having left behind.

There is a little melancholy in every hope.  At least as you get older and realize 'What a great thing this would be! . . . ah, but I have had hopes before.'

I never want to end up believing that I deserved everything.

Sexual attraction comes cheap.  In that way, sexual attraction is very unattractive.

Life is happening now.  Don't put off being alive.  It's a myth that life starts with financial security.

Once you have tasted disappointment, there is an understanding that you are not supposed to be wildly happy anymore.  When you look at the other adults while driving, they always have very serious faces.  We have lost the virginity of our souls, we have felt sadness, and are supposed to carry it everywhere.

There are many things to look forward to this year, to hope for, and it all feels very big inside me.  But I don't want to feel entitled to a good life.  I don't want to feel owed something by God.  We are taught that in a life with God we should expect pain, and that pain will grow us into something that really matters.  Comforts are good, but having only comfort would spoil us into a self-satisfied vapor, and we would sail away when the winds of eternity come sweeping through the world.

Be courageous! The Lord will be with you. You do not walk alone. 

I wish I could have loved you then

when we walked home that night

and your smile lit up the darkened streets,

like the way your whole life feels like hope

to a bitter soul like me. 

In deep space and time I am sure,

somewhere behind a lost star,

my hand wasn't limp when you took it,

and my soul wasn't distracted,

but ready for a life with you.

Walking through an empty room I wonder

what it means to chase dreams

compared with your face and smile,

how can an idea compare to a body?

I suppose the unseen has an infinite weight

next to any one thing you see,

and that's why you'll always bet on your fears.

But you'll start to bet on the real

if you remember it's always true

that anything could be.

I wish I could have loved you then,

but if I could go back I know

I wouldn't love you all over again.

And what does it mean to be sick with longing

for a chance you wouldn't take?

So I bet the whole world sits and wonders

what will become of fools like me,

And all the fools also sit frozen,

just like the nights that made the people

that we would never be.

Life is a very complicated thing, because we just came from a certain place, and then we combine that with the things we see around us now, and that happens millions of times, and it eventually adds up into a very peculiar feeling that requires all those experiences to understand.  Themes emerge and then merge together out of what happened to us at the start.  But it is all too hard to explain, so we don't try.  And the person across from us at the party doesn't try to explain either.  So we talk about other things, and eventually forget the questions we first asked, and our past experiences dim in our minds and get buried far below.  And so in talking to each other we unbecome ourselves and are eventually no one, and they unbecome themselves, and we end up talking to no one.  But we still yearn to go to parties, to surround ourselves with many other people, and so we go, arriving at houses of ghosts, joining together to further disappear.

Sometimes I walk by porches where groups of friends are sitting, and sometimes I sit on porches with friends as strangers walk by.  I have lived from both within and without. 

And what would you do without a drink in your hand?  Would you feel naked?  And do you not find that to be a problem?

When you talk you allow the possibility of others contradicting you.  And what had seemed certain to us we find is extremely dubious to others, and so we change our beliefs, we become less confident, we are held in check.  We might have a subtle belief that it being Sunday makes it improbable that it will rain.  But once we say such a thing, everyone laughs at us.  And then we realize we're an idiot.  But then we must wonder, what about introverts?  They don't talk as much, so they never tell people about their crazy thoughts, which we all have.  So what about them?  Do introverts quietly carry with them vast storehouses of weird beliefs?  Or maybe they are just smarter than us in the first place and have no crazy thoughts?

Poor introverts.  Living in a world of us foolish extroverts.  I bet that's how it is.

Or maybe that’s just another crazy thought.    

There could be a million reasons for what you did, an understanding of them all will never feel like an apology.

Suppose that you did something wrong, but it was kind of an accident, like you were late for something important to someone.  If when you are apologizing you explain why it was an accident or how you were not trying to hurt them, you either do not care to apologize or do not know how to.

If you apologize with a disclaimer, you think apologizing is like a handshake.  You are saying 'Your experience is important, but let's face it, so is mine'. 

As you explain all your reasons, their eyes will search your face, not understanding.  They are waiting for you to say something you are not saying.  A hurt feeling is not made through rational argument, and so it cannot be removed through rational argument.  It is a feeling, and so it must be responded to with a gesture of feeling.  You just say 'I'm sorry' and then you say nothing else.  An apology is a bow.

He is a weary soul who is not in the habit of apologizing. 

Pride is a subtle thing.  But when I cringe at the idea of pure apology, I know I am there. 

And in the end, who will care about all those petty excuses?  What did your defenses matter?  Aren't you glad they are gone?  Doesn't it feel good to not hide? 

And from all this we know, it is a deeply relational world.

Last night I was very afraid because a Cyclops followed me home.  Then at the last second it passed me and turned into a car with a headlight out.  Even worse than I thought: This Cyclops was a transforming Cyclops. 

From what I understand of the situation in Africa, these Ad Libyan rebels are just making things up as they go along.

Recently a light turned on in my car that said "check engine".  So I popped the hood and took a look.  It looked fine.  For some reason the light is still on.  I don't know what it wants from me.

I love waking up one minute before my alarm is set to go off.  I like to pretend it's a bomb and that I saved thousands of people by defusing it.

Yesterday my friend Ranalli explained to me why I would be a bad babysitter.  He said, 'They would be crying, and then you would start explaining to them why crying isn't necessary, and then they would just cry more'.

I think even worse than finding out that you are an adopted child would be finding out your children are adopted. How would you see that coming?

The other day my little brother and I had a 'what if?' tea party.  A 'what if?' tea party is a tea party where you talk about all the ways things could have been.  For instance, I asked him 'What if the Incredibles had been green?' and he said 'Then they would have been called the Recyclables'. 

And that is a 'what if?' tea party.

And now . . . what if I went to bed?  And remember, it's someone's birthday today! 

p.s. I think my official stance as President would be to shorten the calendar year to ten days.  That way each of our birthdays would happen a lot more often.  This Gregorian thing is simply outdated.  Bring on the parties.

"Well, it was good running into you," Alisha said with a smile.
"Yeah, we'll stay in touch," I affirmed with a confident nod.
"Oh," she murmured.  She seemed distraught, perhaps even a bit confused.  "Why—I mean, what do you mean?"
"You know, stay in communication, write to you....things like that." I was a bit lost as I tried to explain the familiar concept.
"But you're really going to do that?" she cried with a determined emphasis.
"....Yes," I said, tilting my head forward, a bit skeptical now.
"Really? You are going to write to me?"
"Yeah, I mean, it's possible..."
"Possible?"
The note of uncertainty she played hung in the air between us.  We were standing on a walkway by a sward on our university campus.  I bit my lip.
"Ok," I relented with a heavy sigh. "I'm not going to stay in touch. I actually said that without meaning it."
"Phew," she breathed in immediate relief as she shifted her weight.  Her eyes moved about to grease themselves again.
"So I guess this is just goodbye, then," I reflected aloud.
"Yeah," she croaked in the sudden morose realization. She flushed from head-to-toe with the thought of eternal departure.  I looked at her, at her downcast eyes, and I was overcome with the moment as well.  This was it for us.  Alisha, the girl I had known in Mr. Carson's junior creative writing class for one semester in high school three years ago, was about to exit my life forever.  The tension suddenly exploded, and with the passion of a 1950s musical she flung her arms around me and began sobbing.  The dam broke for me as well and we cried over all the good times we had never had.
"I'm going to miss you," she wailed.
"I'll miss you, too," I choked through my tears.
"Really?" she said, sniffling hard.
"No," I said with a wistful sigh as I looked over her shoulder. 
She pulled back from the hug.  "Yeah," she nodded.  "But just think," she went on, looking over my shoulder at a display of lives we had never lead.  "Just think if we had been closer."
"That would have been great," I said. 
"Yeah."
She shuffled her feet and looked at the ground as she rubbed the tears from her cheek.  I sniffled a few times and wiped my cheek as well.
"Well," she heaved, still in recovery.
"Some other life?" I said emotionally.
"Yeah," she whimpered. "Some other life."  She finished with a smile of agreement.
With that we nodded curtly at one another and walked on in the direction of our actual lives, as the puddle our tears had formed quickly evaporated. 

The other day I stood at the fridge as my dad worked away on his laptop at the kitchen table.

"Dad," I began in a sharp voice as I referred to a container in the fridge.  "What is this?  There is macaroni here with no cheese. Why did someone make macaroni with no cheese?  Why not use the cheese?"

"I, uh, sent the cheese to another country," he replied in a monotone voice as he continued working.

"You sent the cheese to another country," I parroted.  "And why exactly did you do this?"

"I sent it to Uzbekistan.  I have some people there who wanted it.  They have a shortage of cheese."

"I see," I said.  I strolled out of the room and I wrote down the quote that night.  I figured it was one of those summer moments around the house I'll want to remember some day.  My dad is notorious for making up answers to questions, and this one was pretty good.

Then yesterday as I prepared the pasta for breakfast my mother explained, "Oh yes, there's no cheese because dad brought it with him on his last trip.  Somewhere in Europe."

"Uzbekistan?" I asked.

"Yes, that's the one."

And then I thought, 'Oh. He really did take the cheese to Uzbekistan.'

It seemed to be a once-in-a-lifetime thought to have occur seriously to oneself.  Then again, this is how things tend to go around the Mendola house.   

You are not drunk enough to find the truth.

My man, as long as you hang onto that meaningless dignity, you'll never see the world for what it is.

A lover stood and sang a love song with his eyes closed, and so his happiness was all he knew.  Another lover stood and sang a love song with his eyes open, and he loved her all his days.

The truth is not in ordinary moments.  It comes around the world of dreams, the world of drunkenness, when everything mundane is blurred, and everything true moves before us.

Everyone searches for the next thing that will make them happy.  We are always listening with these two voices inside, one saying 'Will this make me happy?' and another voice, much quieter, much softer, almost dead in most of us, that whispers 'Will this make others happy?'

In a time when the dreams of most kids are romantic, hidden, impossible, it's easy to forget that simple love is all that counts.

People will never do what you want them to do.  You have a role imagined for each person you know.  They will never play them.  They are not your puppets.  They are not here for your satisfaction.  They lead lives of their own, they wake up each day with hopes and dreams piercing through them.  You are an accident, you found them by mistake, you should not be here at all.  People are not your puppets.  Adapt to the world for you are the imposter.  Stop wishing people would serve you if only they somehow glimpsed the secret importance you know yourself to have. 

They thought I was preaching, but the whole time I was just explaining that I knew what I was doing was wrong.  Most of what I say is a subtle criticism of myself.

You call me a hypocrite but I know what I do. A hypocrite is someone who lives more honestly than others.  I write to resuscitate the truths I know I trample.

If it's something I don't want to hear, at least it means we're getting closer to the truth.  There's a lot of hope to be had.  People aren't gone yet, we can make our names new.  Hallelujah.