Silver Linings

Contrasts and ironies never cease to amaze me.

It is incredible to me how the wealthiest parts of a city are only steps away from the roughest parts. The way people write "Save Trees!" on sheets of paper that were made by cutting down trees. When college dropouts are the guest speakers at college graduations...

I can't even...

It also amazes me how one person's happiness means another's sadness.

As I watched the LA Kings (You had to know this was going towards hockey) win their series and shake hands with the San Jose Sharks, I realized that the center ice line separated two very different emotions. The LA Kings win meant that the San Jose Sharks would lose yet another playoff series. Their elation was heartbreak to the San Jose Sharks.

And it got me thinking...everything on this planet is bittersweet.

One person's acceptance into their safety schools is another person's rejection from their dream school. The success of one business often means the failure of another. Every year added onto your life is another one closer to death.

There is a negative side to everything.

But there is also a silver lining.

And I suppose the silver lining is what we live for. 

High School sucks 80% of the time. The other 20% rocks.

Hard work is hard, but we do anyway because we are working towards something. We may not know what it is, but we know there is something. And the second there is nothing, you know you are in trouble.

We live for recognition. We live to have something to look forward to because according to Anne Shirley, that's half the fun.  We live to work.

The silver lining is a human being's purpose on this planet. Because without that purpose, we are lost boats at sea.

Everyone grows up wanting their purpose to be changing the world. But how? What can we do that someone else has not done? What makes extraordinary? When do we figure it out?

It's why we connect to books and literature. We love The Fault in Our Stars because they may be a hot mess, but Augustus and Hazel have it figured out. They have the infinity they crave. The deeper level of understanding they have for life. And themselves.

Do you ever wonder if the people around are deeper than they appear? Do you ever really know your peers? What drives them to do what they do and want what they want? What makes them cry? Or laugh? What gives them goosebumps? Who are they? And what do they think of who you are?

We want to be the ones with the quotes that people recite for generations. The ones that everyone will remember. But we must hurt people to do so...And that's the hard part.

What makes a human extraordinary? What makes our thoughts and voices worthy of being immortal?

That's a lot of questions on my part.

-Hamna

And So-Goodnight…(The Mental Breakdown That Began This Blog)

You would not be wrong to say that Isra and I cannot make a decision to save our lives.

(Seriously, if a song comes up on my iTunes and I don't want to listen to it, it's practically finished by the time a pick another to put on.)

One of my favourites...

When one of us wants to do something, it's a miracle if the other person will actually want to do it at the same time. So, as you can imagine, when it was time to name this "blog", we couldn't pick a single name. We had pages full of different names. Most of them were lame. Others were heartfelt, yet anyone else would think they were lame. Most of them came from different books and quotes.

I adore Anne of Green Gables because I adore PEI. My favourite character would probably be Walter, Anne's son. The most beautiful, poetic, innocent and just deep person I know. I know him. I love him. He's an image of idealism and someone who just loves beauty. At the conclusion of the series, Walter dies a death on battered, blood-stained battlefield in France. That broke my heart. He leaves a letter for his sister, affectionately named Rilla-my-Rilla (say it out loud, it sounds lovely). I've read this letter more than a dozen times. Yet as I read it, looking for inspiration in a title, I started to cry.

He's amazing... 

I'm talking about the kind of tears that shake your body and make your eyes sore. Isra was sitting next to me. As I read, she told me to stop crying and took it from and then she started reading. Low and behold, she started sobbing too. We both sat there and read Walter Blythe's last words out loud. And cried.

I'm still not sure why we cried so hard.

Maybe it was the way someone so filled with beauty could die that way. Or because he's not real. Or that he thinks life is harder than death. Because it's not just a book. It's a story. And stories are what make us who we are. Without them, we're not human.

I've had those moments more times than I count. The absolutely paralyzing ideas that come into your mind. That make you question everything. That make you feel overwhelmed with guilt or sadness. And you have absolutely no idea why.

Then we realized that L.M Montgomery was really depressed. And naming a blog after something that made us cry so much wasn't a good idea.

So there it is. My emotional-for-no-reason teenager moment of the day. It felt good. And bad. Yay!

-Hamna

P.S. The playoffs start on Wednesday. Excited and very nervous!