belly button lent

I sort of like the idea of Lent. It’s like a New Year’s Resolutions lite. Less commitment, because I mean, it's only forty days what WHAT.
Anyway, I’ve decided to give up cynicism for Lent. I’ve been thinking about cynicism a lot lately. I feel like cynics, or those who “more mildly” engage in acts of cynicism, seem to think they are right simply on the basis that they are jaded. And I’ve decided it’s lame. I don’t know what it is that makes us certain that looking at everything in the worst possible light makes us right. It’s such a cop out. For some reason, it’s so easy to argue. I think maybe because it assumes a black and white world, a world where things are either all good or all bad and because there is clearly some bad in the world there must be nothing else. What bothers me is not the acknowledgment of evil, it’s the blatant manipulation of beauty and willful degradation of good to make them evil as well. And that really bothers me, it pisses me off. How dare we? How dare we take the things that are beautiful and good in the world and declare them spoiled? Because there are some good and perfect things in the world. Things like love, and laughter, and connecting. Things like shadow and light and mountains. Things like the sea. Things like holding hands and creating and breathing. Things like people when they are human. Things like caring when they are not. These things, these and many more things, are good. Even though sometimes they are not. And yet my cynical side is pointing to me that hurricanes come from the sea and destroy lives and people are capable of great evil. And somehow, the fact that they are (sometimes, and exceptionally) forces for bad seems to instantly degrade that those times are the anomaly, they are the exception, and that most of the time, most of the world is filled with very very beautiful things. Beautiful things that exist in the midst of the most horrific ugly. But for some reason we find it easier to ignore them rather than accept that good and bad mix together, that they can coexist, that they same thing can be both good and bad.
But I wonder about it. I wonder when or why we decided that any bad discounts all good? Why is it like that? Do we really believe that bad is stronger than good? Do we really believe that the existence of evil, no matter how rare, undermines the validity of all the rampant good in the world? It’s weird. And it’s wrong. I would even go so far to say that it’s mildly offensive to a God who claims to be source of every good and perfect thing in the world. And I think it’s a cop out. I think it’s taking the easy way out. It seems to make sense. Society seems to accept jaded answers as valid arguments. I submit that it is not a valid argument. It is the cowardly and lazy view of the world. Because I think that beautiful things take a lot of courage to stand up for, to believe in. Not because they are not there, but because they themselves are acts of courage. And they take pointing out when you live in a society which refuses to acknowledge them.
OKOKOKOKOKOKOKOK so that’s my rant on cynicism, and all that to say that I made a little Lent promise to notice good things, and funny things, in my life. To point them out. And I want to share them. So for the next 40 days I am going to try to notice and write down something funny or good that happened every day. And I’m going to mostly put them here so you can enjoy them too.
I’m doing this for me
But also, for you.
But mostly for me.

Anyway, you may point out that I am already a day late, well that’s because I didn’t know whether to post this or just put up the funny things. I couldn’t decide. I may end up deleting it.


also, for your voyeuristic pleasure, an excerpt from a gmail chat conversation I had with Kimi about death (sorry kimi for not asking permissions.)


me: also, if I am ever murdered, I want you to know that I am against the death penalty and I want all my family and friends to try to practice forgiveness and love
to make the world a better place and honor my memory

Kimberly: ow i just got a paper cut trying to get a cracker

me: also, I want you to wear a shirt with my face on it at all times
or just iron my likeness on all your clothes preferably with little tiny figurines of me as all zippers and models of my face as all the buttons of your clothes

Kimberly: and i will have ones for different days with different expressions

me: right, and consult me outloud when making mundane decisions like, what to order at the restaurant or what socks to wear and if someone asks why tell them I was a micromanaging bitch and I would have wanted it that way. then, under your breath, whisper "irony"


tl;dr version: I’m going to write many short posts in the next few days.