smile, what's the use of crying?

For the first time, in quite some time, I can legitimately say that life sucks. Whenever that happens, I can feel my insides sloshing around because I’ve lost autonomy over my own body. A smile, a chuckle, or a laugh wanes as quickly as it comes.

When your life wave reaches a low point, as it inevitably and innately does, it is easy and natural to succumb to the sorrow.

Today, I got lucky. In my attempt to implement my regular “Sunday Internet Unplug,” I tuned into the TEDTalks podcasts on iTunes for light entertainment. I quickly scanned through the dozens of podcasts for the most intriguing titles and found Neil Pasricha’s talk, “The 3 A’s of awesome.”

Neil began writing the now super-famous blog, “1000 Awesome Things," when he was going through difficult times. Reading his blog will make you smile.

Each post is a straightforward and brief reminder the world’s infinite awesomeness like “#329 Twisting the lid off the jar after nobody else could,” “#363 Correctly guessing the secret ingredient,” “#365 Getting dressed out of the dryer or laundry basket,” or “#366 Little kids showing you their muscles.”

Life is awesome and un-awesome sometimes. Mostly awesome, we just don’t notice or give life credit.

I’ll exit tonight with a quote from Swami Sivananda, which I had on my person through most of college: “Life has meaning only in the struggle. Triumph or defeat is in the hands of the Gods. So let us celebrate the struggle!”

P.S. How's this for awesome: an actual gingerbread house. The real deal. (Actually, just the front of gingerbread house affixed to a wall, but still, awesome!