Learn to value yourself…

…which means to fight for your happiness. – Ayn Rand

Carissa.

Some of my earlier pieces… and while I see so much wrong with them I also see so much promise in them.  Carissa will be detailed further in an upcoming post so I won’t say too much now besides I absolutely love her.

I love to read… and if I didn’t have all this crazy business and fun friends and wild schedule its all I would do… well also if I didn’t have worsening vision.  Glasses are so unbecoming next to my chubby cheeks.  But this is a must read book no matter how bad a headache you could get after reading small print.  I would say I even think men would enjoy it but that might be a bit of a stretch.

I have no doubt that anyone that reads it doesn’t find it somewhat inspiring.  Its quite a story, written magnificently by Elizabeth Gilbert and includes so much that one could relate to… on many different subjects:  On love, on womanhood, on starting a family, on mid-life crisis, on friendship, on emotions, on food, on divorce, on sanity, on religion… but for me what spoke most loudly was her story of insecurity.  She writes vividly on the struggle to make herself happy… and what should make a person happy because so often making yourself happy is making another happy as well.  And that is a hard battle we all fight daily.  Sometimes these two goals align, other times they don’t.  She faces this topic in her travels to three very beautiful yet different places each chosen for her belief that maybe it is there she will find what she needs to save herself.  I can relate to her writing style (which makes it that much easier to read) but also find that maybe she found her solemnity in her writing… something she had always done.  The book helps all of us think about happiness… ultimate happiness, if it exists.  It is an inspiring attempt by Elizabeth Gilbert to do exactly what this quote speaks of:  learn to value yourself… to fight for your happiness.  She does just that: LEARNS to do this… LEARNS how to FIGHT for something so often we all think should just come.  I could say so much more but instead I’m going to offer a few of my favorite quotes from the book… good by themselves but even better in context of the whole book.  I suggest you get yourself a copy… following one person’s learning will no doubt allow you to start doing a little more of it too… it’s inspiring.

• “I look at the Augusteum, and I think that perhaps my life has not actually been so chaotic, after all.  It is merely this world that is chaotic, bringing changes to us all the nobody could have anticipated.”
• “I’m choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am.  I’m making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises. I know all this.  But still…”
• On her divorce… but can be applied to so much: ” It’s the emotional recoil that kills you, the shock of stepping off the track of a conventional lifestyle and losing all the embracing comforts that keep so many people on that track forever”
• “So now I have started living my own life.  Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly.”
• “But I felt a glimmer of happiness when I started studying Italian, and when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt–this is not selfishness, but obligation.  You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.”
• Advice from her friend Richard:  ”People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants.  But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.  A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake.”
• “He says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you are fortunate enough.  But that’s not how happiness works.  Happiness is the consequence of personal effort.  You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it.  You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings.  And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it.”

Oh I love that book!  Tomorrow is TWO, yes TWO, of thee most awesome chicks you’ll ever meet AND another giveaway.  Tomorrow is going to be great… love me some Fridays!  Stay in touch… erika@erikaleighphotography.com!