Thursday, January 13, 2011

Mrs. Rumphius and Fireworks

The kids and I listened to a book on tape yesterday. The book is called Mrs. Rumphius, and it's a story about a little girl named Alice whose grandfather suggests that she should do three things in her life: travel everywhere, come home to live by the sea, and make the world beautiful. She chooses to make the world beautiful by sowing lupine seeds throughout her town by the sea (after being quite ill for almost a whole year).

I thought about the idea of making the world beautiful a LOT yesterday. What am I doing to make the world beautiful? When I ponder "world" I think the author of Mrs. Rumphius didn't necessarily mean the world at large (although kick ass if it ends up that way), but your world, where you live. Making the world of people you know beautiful. I ended up thinking that this is really an admirable goal, and no matter what else you want to do with your life, striving to make the world beautiful is awesome.

I've been feeling really down lately. Things with my health are in a holding pattern while I wait for results of a ct scan. Somehow, instead of taking charge of my own life, I let cancer take charge of me. It's a helpless, scary feeling. I think Mrs. Rumphius came at a really great time, reminding me to focus on making the world beautiful, to focus on sharing the beauty with my children.

Then yesterday on the way to get my labs done, I heard a song I hear all the time. It's not one of my favorite songs, it's kind of background noise since my lame-o car cd player quit working. I don't know what made me listen to the lyrics, maybe because I couldn't understand some of them. The song was Katy Perry's Firework. Do you know that one?

Do you ever feel like a plastic bag
drifting through the wind wanting to start again

Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin
like a house of cards one blow from caving in

Do you ever feel already buried deep?
Six feet under scream but no one seems to hear a thing.

Do you know that there's still a chance for you
'cause there's a spark in you?

Just gotta ignite the light and let it shine
Just own the night like the 4th of July

Maybe the reason why all the doors are closed
So you could open one that leads you to the perfect road


And it goes on and on (haha, oh Katy Perry). But I think in any bad situation, don't you wonder why there doesn't seem to be an open door? Don't you wonder why things happen the way they do, especially bad things? Maybe all the doors have been closed for me because I still haven't opened the one with the perfect road yet. I don't know what that perfect road is yet. Maybe it's the door to making the world beautiful, I don't know.

So I'm going to keep working on making the world beautiful, and focusing on that instead of what stupid cancer might or might not be doing. And I'll keep looking for that door too, and igniting that spark. I invite you to do the same, of course. :)

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