Do not look forward to the changes of life in fear;

rather look to them with full hope as they arise,

God will deliver you from out of them.

He has kept you hitherto,

do you but hold fast to His dear hand,

and He will lead you safely through all things;

and, when you cannot stand,

He will bear you in his arms.

Do not look forward to what may happen tomorrow;

the same everlasting Father who cares for you today

will take care of you then and everyday.

Either He will shield you from suffering,

or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it.

Be at peace, and put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations.

Last night, my sister showed me this prayer and I've been obsessed with it ever since. Currently, my family is going through a very scary, difficult time. Last week, my dad had a stem cell transplant, which involves high dose chemo that wipes out his entire immune system. In order to keep him alive, they infuse him with his healthy stem cells. This process of revitalizing his immune system takes time, so he is currently at extreme risk of infection, and now has to spend 7-10 days in the hospital. He sleeps all day, needs help walking, can hardly eat, and has become increasingly irritable. 

This current situation has obviously left each member of my family struggling through it and constantly searching for strength to continue through their day. Personally, it has been really hard for me to be away at school and have to go to my classes, do homework, etc. as if nothing is out of the ordinary. A lot of the time, I feel like a zombie and completely out of it, as my thoughts are solely centered around my dad and how he's doing. All I want to do is be at home with my family, not sitting in the library studying Neurodevelopmental Disorders.

Reading this prayer has left me feeling that maybe I CAN get through this. That maybe I really do have enough strength to keep living my life while all of this is going on. God is there for me even when I feel completely alone, guiding me towards peace, hope, and faith. The most I can do is accept Him with open arms, even when it seems easier to reject Him and just dwell on the worst. Also, this prayer made me think about all of the gifts God has given me to help me overcome this dark time. Specifically, God has given me the absolute best friends at Notre Dame. They have left me feeling completely overwhelmed with love and support countless times, and they go above and beyond to make sure I know that they are thinking of me and praying for me. I feel so lucky and blessed to have them in my life, and I don't know where I would be without them. I see God working through each one of them every day.

I copy/pasted this prayer on a "sticky note" on my laptop desktop. Now, every morning and whenever I feel down, I will read this prayer and remember that God is with me and will guide me through this journey.

“That is why we must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time.... God is forcing us on, or up, to a higher level: putting us into situations where we will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than we ever dreamed of being before. It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us”

Recently, my dad received some bad news about his cancer. In the past week, he has had to undergo many tests and scans, which has proved to be very difficult because of his short term memory loss and other health issues. Everything has taken twice as long as it needs to be and we have to constantly repeat what is going on and remind him of the unfortunate status of his cancer. During times like this, it's so so easy to dwell on how unfair everything is and how my dad and my family have done nothing to deserve any of these hard times. It doesn't make any sense and there is no way to fix it or make it go away, and so it feels justified to become angry with God for allowing any of it to happen. 

I came across the quote above during a philosophy class this past semester. I love it because it acknowledges that we have no idea why bad things happen to the best people. Although we can't understand why we have to go through personal obstacles, God vows to never leave us alone and we must remain confident that we will only become stronger, better people on the other side. Recently, this quote has given me a lot of strength because it reminds me that I have more love and patience than I sometimes feel I have. Inevitably, I will still have my moments of frustration, sadness, and anger, but this quote helps me move away from that unhealthy place and towards a place of acceptance. Especially when we go through obstacles and tragedies, it's almost impossible to fully accept that God has a plan for each of us that we won't ever completely understand. However, I find comfort in knowing that God will help me as much as I let Him and that these trying times are providing opportunities to become the best person I can be.

It’s amazing to think that I started this blog almost exactly four years ago.  When I first made the blog, I remember feeling desperate to relate to someone else about all the feelings and emotions I had been enduring.  My dad had just been diagnosed with cancer one year before, and had lost his short-term memory three years before that.  Although at the time, his cancer had made it into remission, I still struggled with accepting all of the obstacles my dad and my family had gone through.  His short-term memory loss especially affected me, as I was constantly reminded of the difficult reality with his repetitive questions and altogether different personality.

First and foremost, I’m proud of my seventeen-year-old self for dealing with these feelings in such a healthy way.  Instead of internalizing my emotions and isolating myself from others, I took my struggles as an opportunity to potentially help others who are also going through various obstacles.  The main goal of this blog continues to be to relate to others in any way that I can.  If a simple sentence or quote strikes someone and lessens his/her pain in any way, I’ve accomplished what I’ve sought out to do.  It means the world to when people have reached out and have told me that their blog inspired them and motivated them to keep going.  The ability to connect with someone in this way affects everyone involved and makes the world feel that much less overbearing.

Although so much has remained the same, I have also grown so much in the past four years.  I have learned so much about myself, and have learned how to truly love and value myself.  Four years ago, I undermined my emotions and thought that being strong meant not feeling sad or overwhelmed.  I wanted to avoid these feelings, and I would get angry with myself when I felt upset.  Now, I accept and embrace these feelings. I realize that these moments of emotion make me human.  Instead of making me weak, they make me strong because I am able to overcome them and remain determined to live a happy, full life.

Life is life and horrible, unfair, scary things happen to the best of people.  Letting this fact dominate your mentality will only cause you to be miserable.  If nobody can change the inevitability of death and suffering, why not learn to liv the best life possible while you can!? Your mortality can serve to motivate you instead of burden you.  Nobody’s perfect, and some days, life will get the best of you.  Simply stepping out every day with the intention to remain peaceful and happy is enough to truly live to your full potential.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

I was recently looking through old pictures on my phone and came across this screenshot.  At the time, I screenshotted it because my mom's message really struck me.  At the time of this conversation (last fall), my dad had just found out that his cancer came back, and that he had very large tumors on his chest. Because of his short term memory loss, it took him a while to ingrain the knowledge that he had cancer into his memory. This time was extremely scary for my entire family. None of us had any idea of what the future would bring for my dad. For me, everything seemed to be falling apart and I had no way to control any of it. Being away from home was overwhelming and stressful, especially because I had to keep up with school even though I was constantly thinking and worrying about my dad. Scary, negative thoughts were always going through my head, and I was always preparing myself for the worst. When I got these texts from my mom, though, I began to see it all from a different light. I couldn't control my dad's cancer or what would happen to him, but instead of using all my energy worrying and being pessimistic, I could spend my time remaining hopeful by praying and going to the grotto alone or with my friends.

I hope to one day have the strength and the trust in God that my dad naturally has each day. Despite all of the horrible things he has gone through, his faith never falters. Instead, he remains confident that God will continue to be by his side, and my family's side, and that everything will be okay. Some days, it takes a lot of extra effort to maintain this mentality because all you want to do is yell at God and feel defeated. However, I hope to use my dad as a constant example to live my life like him every day regardless of the difficult, troubling events that may be occurring around me. 

Below is a blog post from my little sister, Margaret.  Everyone check out her amazing blog at Absolute Compassion!  Rockkk on, sista! 

“The fact is that when you make the other suffer, he will try to find relief by making you suffer more. The result is an escalation of suffering on both sides.” - Thích Nhất Hạnh

Obviously when you are hurt by someone you want to hurt them back. It’s the first instinct. It’s a defense mechanism. But think where that will get you with that person. It will lead to so much more suffering and heartache. No one wants to be around a spiteful person who will just do stuff to hurt you.

That is just so genuinely mean and sad that someone would just want to make you suffer. But you will always encounter those people. If you love someone and you want the best for that person, why would you want to cause suffering to that person? It makes zero sense to me but recently people do shit just to hurt me. How am I supposed to react? It just gets to me. It works. Their mean spiritedness hurts me. As much as I don’t want it to, it does.

How do I act on it? I can’t just let it go because I have such anger and resentment. Giving a reaction will just give that person what they want. But who would want that negativity and drama in their lives?! This person is toxic and spiteful and it’s not fair. It just proves how they shouldn’t be in my life. So yes, you are supposed to let it go and do whatever you need to it away from you. Block them. Do whatever. No matter how bad I want them to be happy and want the best for them, they just want me to be sad. Why is that ok?

Know that if this is the case for you, your frequencies just don’t match. The level of awareness just isn’t the same and there is nothing you can do.

Bottom line, there is nothing you can do about it. The only option is just to let it go. If you don’t let it go there will just be more suffering. Pointless suffering. Pointless negativity. Get that negativity out of your life and live in YOUR truth

"My actions are blissfully free from attachment to outcome."  

This quote was the mantra for the meditation I did today. It epitomizes how I want to live each and every day. In life, the only actions I can control are my own. Because of this, I cannot let others' behavior and reactions to me define who I think I am and what I think of the world around me. As long as I seize each moment and remain the best person I can be, everything will fall into place. This mentality would be impossible if I took others' actions personally. Inevitably, some people are going to react negatively to me and will treat me badly or will simply not like me. I refuse to take these reactions personally because they do not have anything to do with me; they are reflections of their own wounds they have deep inside themselves. It means that I simply do not attract similar energies as them, and that we are not compatible in the moment. If I approach each person with love, there's absolutely nothing more that I can do. I must work to avoid focusing on what I think others want me to do or what I think I'm supposed to do to reach a specific outcome. Instead, I need to breathe and simply stay present and peaceful in each moment, leading with my most authentic self and my soul's deepest values.

"At all times your world is a projection of yourself. Expansion of self to universal awareness is enlightenment."

I was completely struck by this quote when I first saw it. This quote epitomizes how ultimately, each one of us chooses the world we live in. Sure, bad things happen to good people and we often come across difficult circumstances. It's our job to accept those uncontrollable situations, and to refuse to let them dictate how we view each moment and each day. Letting them dictate your life results in living in fear instead of love.

If you live your life in fear, you let your daily insecurities and daily obstacles define your life and who you are. Instead, we all need to work on living with love. This means that you work to live every moment being the most authentic self that you can be. This means living life fully vulnerable and open, determined to make the most out of every situation. Of course, there will be some days where this is nearly impossible and it'll be a struggle to even get out of bed. All that matters is that you face every day trying your best. By being your best, most authentic self, you are doing everything that you can in each moment. If you do this, you can confidently accept the fact that YOU are enough. Everything that's meant to be WILL fall into place the way it needs to because you're living your life guided by love and gratitude for every moment.

Originally, I had planned to study abroad this semester in Australia. I was so excited to get out of the South Bend winter and explore a part of the world that I had only ever dreamed about. However, last semester, I decided that it would be best to withdraw and stay close to home so that I could spend time with my family while my dad underwent treatment for his cancer. I realized that one day, I may regret going abroad and being away from my family during this time, but that I would never regret the precious times spent with my dad if I stayed at Notre Dame. 

Although the decision basically made itself, it was still a huge disappointment. With this horrible, freezing weather and the additional hardship of two of my best friends abroad, this semester could be the worst, most depressing one yet. However, I refuse to let these situations dictate how I live my life. I'm determined find the little things each day to help me remain happy. Instead of focusing on all the adventures I could be having, I remember that I'm still here with some of the greatest friends, and that I have the absolute best time with them. Also, I challenge myself to meditate every morning and work out every day to stay centered and healthy. 

Inevitably, there have been days where I feel like giving up and where I wish my life could be different. I accept these feelings when they come, knowing that they will pass and that I deserve to let myself feel them. The goal is not to be happy 100% of the time, but to simply accept each moment when it comes and try my best to remain my greatest self no matter what comes my way.

the 20- something's guide to self-acceptance

Set the intention to change. Don’t let yourself regress by being upset over not achieving your goals immediately. Success means that you don’t stop trying. Make peace with those who have hurt you. Apologize to those you owe an apology to. You will be humbled. You will be vulnerable. You will find feelings arising that you thought were dead and buried. Sit with them. Be honest with yourself about yourself. There’s no point in working on bettering someone who isn’t really you. 

Everyone is struggling. Despite what Facebook profiles suggest, nobody is perpetually thrilled with their life. The idea that you have to be is silly.Learn to be okay with just being okay. You do not have to have it all together. Nobody expects that of you, and the greatest things in life usually derive from what would otherwise seem like failure. 

Don’t see negative feelings as hindrances but as signs to be followed. Think of your emotions the same way you think of your physical sense of feeling. Your hand hurts if you put it on a hot stove because your body is telling you to remove your hand before it burns off. Consider what your your internal navigation and feelings are telling you to get away from (or alternatively, move toward). 

Write down the things you loathe about yourself, and be honest.Even if it hurts to be put it down on paper, and you’re hesitant to even write anything because you know this means you have to acknowledge this big-bad-terrible-horrible-no-good thing about you. Once you have a list you’re sufficiently uncomfortable with, dig. Think these things through. Consider why you behave the way you do, what influenced you to be that way, whether or not this is innately you and how these actions or traits affect your life. Work on ways to change the things you determine need to be changed. 

Understand that love is a verb, and is an action, and self-acceptance has everything to do with it. Just sitting and thinking about your positive traits and your desire to reform is good, but it’s not going to change anything. 

Realize that life is beautiful because it is flawed, and so are people. Think about somebody you love, and consider how they don’t fit into standard ideas of beauty and perfection. You love them anyway, don’t you? You even find some of these things more endearing than anything, right? Realize that you are loved no differently. 

Know that there is no right way to live. Success is subjective. You cannot follow someone else’s road map. There is no right or wrong way to do things. By accepting this, you start to realize that your life is perfect and beautiful, just not in the ways you falsely believe it should be. Understand that acceptance does not necessarily mean being happy about everything. It just means you are big enough to give acknowledgement.

thought catalog. 

you never have to deal with more than one moment.

This is a pretty long article, but definitely one VERY worth reading. It really made me stop, breathe, and learn to take each moment at a time instead of giving into the hustle and bustle of all the stresses life brings, especially amidst finals and college life.

If you read Raptitude you’ll see me talk a lot about moments.  By the end of this post you’ll understand why I use that word so much.  I grew up thinking the word moment referred to specific instants in time, usually where some significant event occurred.  There were historic moments, life-changing moments, poignant moments, tense moments, touching moments, Kodak moments. They were events to be remembered, reminisced about, or photographed. 

Whatever they were, they held you captive.  Everything else seemed to drop away, and you just watched.  They seemed to be isolated from the normal, linear course of time. 

As for the rest of life, it just seemed to be the normal, steady current of ‘stuff.’  Some fun, some pain, some hope, some confusion, some excitement, some tedium.  Same same but different. 

When I was twenty, desperately leafing through some forgotten self-help book, I came across a peculiar line.  It didn’t astound me at the time, but it still stuck in my head.  It kept appearing in my thoughts.  I think I detected a hint of its significance, but it was years before I fully appreciated how powerful it is.  Now I believe it is the most important thing I ever learned: 

Life unfolds only in moments. 

Nobody has ever experienced anything that wasn’t a moment in action.  And all those moments have had one thing in common, they were all now once. 

So if you think about it, you may picture life as a whole stack of moments, like a stack of photographs that show what happens in your life instant by instant.  The present moment sits at the top, and past moments extend down from there.  New moments drop from above, as the seconds tick by.  That stack of moments is your life.  Right? 

Well, not really.  There is no stack.  If there were, you could just lift a photo out of the middle and it would be as clear and vivid as the one on top.  You could sift through your past at will, and see every detail just as if it were happening again.  You could pick a moment from way down in the stack, maybe your fifth birthday, and recall every detail. 

I remember parts of my fifth birthday, I think.  My mom actually made us cupcakes instead of a cake that year, one for each kid.  My guests’ cupcakes each had one candle, except mine had five because I was the birthday boy.  Of that I’m certain, but I sure couldn’t tell you what I was wearing, or list all the kids who were there.  I’ve got one or two details rattling around in my memory, but the moment itself is gone. 

Of course I have memories, but they are poor facsimiles of the moment they are supposed to represent.  Those memories are not a part of that moment.  They’re a part of this one, right now, where I’m sitting in front of my computer on the evening of April 1, 2009.  They are not a part of October 8th, 1985.  Even memories can only happen now. 

I cannot access my fifth birthday in any way; I’m stuck here.  Now. 

There’s really only one picture, but it keeps changing.  We can remember when it looked different, but we can’t see its past incarnations with anywhere near the clarity we can with the present one. 

So my fifth birthday is as dead as Ben Franklin. This sounds kind of sad, but it’s actually fantastic news. 

If the scope of life never extends beyond one moment, that means you never have to deal with more than one moment. You can bring all your attention and resources to bear on making the smartest move right now; there needn’t be any other considerations.  This means that there are not a million things to do, or a million people to please.  All you ever have to do is observe the moment that is happening, and pick an action that makes sense to you.
It often doesn’t seem like it, but life is always presented in these convenient, manageable slices.  The scope of your power as a person cannot extend beyond this single moving snapshot, so there is no reason to attempt to influence anything beyond it.  Observe the moment, pick what strikes you as a smart move, do it and watch what happens.  That’s the only responsibility you ever need to live up to.  It encompasses everything you can possibly do in life, so don’t kill yourself trying to reach further than that. 

You do not have to figure out your future, or come to terms with your past, because there is no future or past.  Any experiences that seem to be from the past or future are not experiences at all, they are just thoughts.  Those thoughts are all just features of the present moment. 

Try this: 

Hold your hands up, palms facing each other, one beside each ear.  Feel the heat radiating from your head, and get a sense of how small the space is between your hands.  It’s not much bigger than a basketball. 

Every single thing you’ve ever experienced, every sour memory, every embarrassment, every triumph, every great fear and every great hope, is confined within the space between your hands.  All conceptions or visions of your past and future are right there floating above your neck, and they cannot be found anywhere else.  They have no weight of their own, no permanence.  They can take no form other than that of a fleeting thought. 

Rather than experiences, thoughts are more akin to a sudden noise: they arise with a frightful clatter, and are just as suddenly gone, leaving no trace.  Unfortunately, the human mind has some inefficiencies.  The mind doesn’t automatically make a distinction between experiences and thoughts about experiences, regardless of whether those experiences are remembered, anticipated, or imagined. 

If they are mistaken for the actual experiences they represent, the person thinking them can react as such, with the same physical and emotional distress they might have if they were actually experiencing them. These physical responses can trigger other thoughts, and the subsequent torrent of ‘noise’ can take on the appearance of a whole lifetime of regrets and worries. They are still insubstantial thoughts, but the physical and emotional reactions they trigger are concrete and real. Simply recognizing thoughts as the phantom ruses they are can halt this process before it happens. 

Neither the future nor the past can ever be dealt with, and they don’t need to be. You only need to deal with your present-moment thoughts about them.  When you are not having thoughts about those two realms of time, they bear zero relevance to your life.  You can safely let them go and feel free to deal with the living moment at hand. 

This truth, once I fully understood it, released a huge weight from around my neck.  Life wasn’t crushing and heavy, it was as light as air.  Thin as a photograph.  I was finally able to look into each moment as if it were nothing more than an infinitely detailed and poignant living picture.  I could finally take the moments one at a time, because I understood that there never was more than one.  I could appreciate and observe each one, and know that my whole life lies within it, not just a tiny fraction.  There are no ghastly fears out there, stalking me from somewhere else, waiting to pounce.  If they existed, they’d be right here, in the picture for me to look at with the rest of the scenery.  Moments do hold me captive, and everything else does drop away. But they aren’t few and far between, they’re broadcast live, 24-7. 

Moments can be observed with clarity, and can be navigated deftly, but our whole lives are just too vast to be managed at all, no matter how strong or organized we become.  The crushing weight of one’s entire past is always too much to bear, as is the frightful spectre of another forty or fifty years rife with dilemmas and tragedies.  It’s far too complex; there are too many contingencies and unknowns.  Surely something in there will overwhelm or destroy us. 

A human being just can’t deal with that, and often it feels like the best we can do is distract ourselves from it.  But we don’t need to. 

We just have to recognize that there is no ‘out there’ at all.  Life is in right front of you, all of it, always.  And there isn’t any more to it.

don't compare yourself to anyone.

One of the unfortunate tendencies of our humanity is comparing ourselves to each other. We’ve been doing it since we were little kids. “My dad is stronger than yours.” “My house is bigger than yours.” It continues into our teenage years and the category of comparison grow. We compare our looks, our talents, our academic achievements, our friendships, our relationships or lack thereof. The list goes on. 

In our adulthood, I do not think we become any wiser – our measuring stick continues to be the people around us. With the prevalence of social media, I can only imagine that the urge to compare one’s life to the depiction of others’ lives on social media platforms is greater for many of us. Images and expressions from people seemingly to be living only the good life can leave one despaired as to why your life isn’t as good as everybody else’s. Of course the reality that most people won’t tell you is that this portrayal of the good life is only partial, which is just one of many reasons that you shouldn’t compare yourself to others. 

I think many of us are fond of telling each other only the good parts of our lives. It is one of the ways in which life is a performance. But the reality of everyone’s life is that we all have to endure pain in one way or the other. Of course, no one likes to bring that up when they run into their friends at parties. We smile and we laugh and we tell you that life is wonderful or at least alright, even when we might be dying inside, even when we feel like our lives are completely falling apart. If you are perceptive, you know that no matter how wonderful life is, even when life’s struggles are beautiful, this life that is a gift is still a life full of problems. 

The truth is most of us don’t know what each other have negotiated to be where we are in our lives. Take the example of romantic relationships. People often ask me if I ever get lonely or feel left out in comparison to my friends who are in relationships. The truth is sometimes I do – whenever I have to go to an event by myself or bring a girlfriend or guy friend to something that should ordinarily be for couples, of course I feel left out. But the truth is I have learned not to envy people in relationships because I do not know how truly happy they are; I don’t know what they endure every day on account of having a significant other, and I do not know what they have sacrificed to be in that relationship. 

Another great category of comparison is in career. As someone who has always been very diligent about school and work experience, my peers were very surprised that post-college, after failing to go to law school, I worked at a struggling start-up for a year. It didn’t pay much so I was not a high-earning graduate like people suspected I would be. But I liked my job even though it didn’t always give me the monetary satisfaction that many of my friends enjoyed. One of my friends who had landed an amazing job at a top accounting firm one day told me he envied me. I was really surprised because I envied his life. He had moved to L.A., he was a high-earning graduate, and he seemed to be living the good life. He said he envied the freedom and happiness I enjoyed in my job. To him, I was living the good life even though my life was far from it. 

It’s okay to want things other people have; it is quite natural and we should want good things for ourselves. But we should not fool ourselves into thinking that other people have picture-perfect lives. Everyone struggles, everyone hurts, and everyone is enduring something that they probably won’t tell you about. Whatever picture people paint their life as, rest assured that any one life in all its parts is beautiful and dark, hopeful and weary, a blessing and an everyday battle. Focus on the good parts of your life and be grateful for your own set of problems because if you knew what everyone else was going through, you would probably still choose your own life. Don’t compare yourself to anyone and while we’re at it, let’s be a little kinder to each other along the way.

thought catalog. 

become aware of a silent but powerful sense of presence.

“Incredible change happens in your life

 when you decide to take control of 

what you do have power over instead of 

craving control over what you don't.”

When I read this quote, it really struck me.  In life, so many things happen every day that we simply can't control.  People (including me) spend way too much time trying to control these unavoidable events, using up all their energy on something that won't ever change.  This causes people to feel discouraged and unsatisfied with their life.  This could all change if we spent less time on this and more time on acknowledging that a situation may not be ideal, but that we are strong enough to accept it and move on.  Of course this can be very very difficult, especially if it's something like a family illness or a death, but it's necessary if you want to fully live your life without letting the event consume you.

I think another thing I overlook a lot is that I CAN control what I focus on and what I make my priorities in my day to day life.  I tend to become frustrated with people who don't make an effort to keep up their friendship with me.  I spend way too much energy trying to keep it alive when maybe, right now it's just not meant to be.  Instead of doing this, I could easily be focusing on the amazing friendships I do have and wholeheartedly appreciating them more.

Also, I tend to make my priorities things that really do not matter in the long run.  I too often become so preoccupied with the hustle and bustle of mindlessly studying all week and going out all weekend that I don't stop, take a breath, and realize what's truly important.  I refuse to go through the motions of life, so I'm definitely going to challenge myself to take more time to reflect, slow down, and go after what has real value in my life, like my relationships with friends, family, God, and myself.