What to do when you don't know what to do.

I just turned 24—another year and I can’t help but wonder, really? With everything going on in the world, with nature and it catastrophes, political regimes shifting and plummeting, it's easy to get fuzzy-eyed and confused. So every year at my birthday I try to make a concrete list of dreams, ambitions, goals for that year of life. 24 this year to attempt, to put out there on the line. This helps me see where the heck I’m at and intentionally reminds myself that my moments make up my days and my days make up my life. And life, I hear it’s a pretty stella thang these days…. So other than providing a KILLER list this year—I hope to make a true dedication nevertheless. And they're not really profound, life-altering attempts. They're simple, small (often sometimes stupid) small things. But if small things don't matter, what's all the fuss about atoms and quantum physics jargon? I mean isn't it through these microscopic small particles that flaunt the idea of parallel universes existing through them?

I just finished up a truly mesmerizing piece of narrative art, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. Roy intertwines that if the human heart’s nature is extreme brutality, then it is also of extreme love. It is a story told in the simple, every day thoughts of children and their observation of adults’ conflicted emotional and tyrannizing lives. She is inspiring in her words, actions, HER LIFE. She puts words to what speaks my heart’s desire for this year, maybe all years—in what shines beauty and truth into every single day:

“To love. To be loved. To never forget my own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around me. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget."

You know love must be love when it comes trickling in the rains, daintily soft, but always, always flooding the river.