IAmElementalToy

Ruminations (Part Two): It's the Big Things Last week’s post was about a Q&A session with students at F.I.T. & our conversation about my belief that the little things-the daily choices we make-are a determining factor in who we ultimately become. We also talked about "The Big Things". Because the truth is that big, bad things happen; all the time. It is the rare individual who gets to glide through life untouched by sorrow; my own mother died forty years ago this month (get your mammograms, ladies!). But, as I explained, it is my belief that we all have the power to determine whether we walk through the fire, or end up in ruins. I also admitted to the F.I.T. students that I have recently changed my outlook regarding which specific power we need to use to work through pain with the least amount of scarring. In my mid-twenties I wrote a book. It was autobiographical fiction - more fiction than fact, but the following passage reflected my personal truth: "Yes, I have felt sorrow. But, I have never despaired. Bad things happen all the time, but that doesn’t mean that life can’t be good. It’s simply a matter of choosing to be happy. And if you don’t believe me, if you don’t think that happiness is a choice, then you have obviously never suffered and survived. Because anyone who has ever been trapped inside a tragedy knows that the only way to escape intact is to laugh – out loud & often. I think that a person could suffer a lifetime of sorrows and still have a happy life, so long as they never stopped laughing." I have fervently clung to the belief that happiness is a choice my whole life. It is only recently that I have come to understand that, while the sentiment remains exactly the same, I wasn't ever really talking about happiness. Happiness is too elusive, too random to be controlled. What I have been preaching my whole life is, actually, OPTIMISM. Optimism is hopefulness & confidence about the future. And, that, I explained to the student who asked me how I managed set backs, is how you get through the pain to the other side. Optimism & lots of laughter. Choose Optimism & Humor & your mind can be your best friend, instead of your worst enemy.

Ruminations (Part One): It's the Little Things A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by two Fashion Institute of Technology Journalism classes. After the students finished with the formal interview, I stayed for a general, open-ended Q&A session. We talked a little bit about what it means to be a college student today. In a recent Yale University study, 61% of the college students polled reported feeling "overwhelming anxiety" on a regular basis. This troubles me. Not because, as I explained to them, I think that this is supposed to be the best time of their lives; life is often a struggle. However, that doesn't mean that you can't create a good life out of the chaos. How? By choosing, every single day, to do the right thing rather than the easy thing. "Don't practice what you don't want to become," I told them, because, in the end, you really DO become what you practice. As my husband says, it only takes a one degree shift away from a goal, a dream, or a responsibility to end up completely off track. And, it's the little things - the small, everyday choices - that shift us by degrees, and throw us off course. It's Darwinian. Except, instead of Survival of the Fittest, it's Survival of the Choices. And, so, that is why I urged the students to always choose to use their powers to be their best selves.