Being "Phililosiphical"

"This I Knew, This I Know, and This I Cannot Know"

Giving advice is something I try hard to not fail at completley.  To know that all of the dumb, unfair, and hurtful things that I've done, or have had done to me, can help someone and possibly save them  from entering the same situation keeps me striving for words that will connect with others and help them to see my own side, in hopes that they will be able to take some piece of it into consideration of their own situation.
When I am handed a problem that is so important to the person who came to me, I'll admit I freak out a little bit.  As I talk, I talk slowly and I think of their reaction before everything I say.
Because the most important thing at this moment is to never lie.
Don't tell them what they want to hear just because it'll solve their problem faster.  That truly solves nothing at all.  It's so hard to see people getting upset, to see them cry because they hurt.  But there are times in life where "warm-fuzzies" will do nobody any justice.
These are those times where your advice can either hurt or help, and the line between is very thin.

So how do you tell someone that it's going to be okay, when they have chosen which side of the fork in the road to go down already, and they've already started walking down that path... but they've stopped and are no longer moving.  They are just standing there because they can't stop themselves from looking backwards at that road that they've just left.  A road they've traveled for so long. They used to know where it went, until suddenly they came upon a decision they hadn't before considered to exist.

You're job, as their friend, as someone who loves them, is to walk past them as they stand there.
You walk down that road further, and see what awaits them if they keep walking.
If you decide they should keep walking, and that road will not do them any harm but will help them,
it is then your job to push them to continue on their way.
If you see harm waiting for them, you take them by the hand and lead them back.

It's not  hard to tell when a person needs change, and that need is obvious.
A lost person has a very distinctive look: they talk with an uncertain tone, they talk in questions, and they have trouble forming the one actual question that they need to ask you ... because they don't really know what it is that they need at first.  They've lost themselves in time and they no longer know how to decide what is best for them.  
You have to be careful, because telling them what they should do will only allow them to not  think for themselves even more than they never have, you need to make them make the decision that is right for them.  They need to start there in order to start finding themselves, to start thinking for themselves, once again.

Tonight I saw the chance at new opportunities for you, and sitting there with you talking I knew that you had the answer of what you should do and what was right for you in your head the whole time.  It just needing a little more back-up opinion before you'd become sure that your decision was what you needed, and what you wanted.
I did my best to not tell you straight-up what I thought you should do,
I laid out possibilities and let you decide for yourself.
I informed you of any possible things I saw waiting for you down this road, and I warned you it is going to be hard.
But I believe that you're strong,
I think that you're smart and talented,
and I know that you are lost.
But I believe your decision is a choice that is going to lead you back to yourself in the end,
and that is was a very, very good decision that you made, though a hard one.
And I'm proud of you.
You know I'll be here when you become uncertain again, to push you to keep going.
And I'm so excited: because I, as well as so many others, love you for exactly who you are right now, lost and everything, and we can't wait to see who you become when you really find you again.

Love you Kikki: Who you are now, and who you are going to find yourself to be.

Growing-Up

Sometimes growing-up means doing things you don't really want to.
It means not liking every decision your going to have to make.
It means possibly loosing people you can't live without.
But it means becoming who you've always wanted to be.
It means making decisions that will lead you to where you really belong.
It means meeting new friends, and keeping the old ones,
They are the best ones, as well.
It's scary.
It's hard.
It can be mean.

But it's exciting.
Adventurous,
And hard work will pay-off.
It's a part of life none of us can really avoid.
You have to accept what's past and learn to love what's present.
Those who stay and accept changes will mean everything,
Those who leave, you can leave as well.
They are trying to grow-up too.
People are the only ones who make decisions hard.
If you'd only yourself to consider, what you choose wouldn't matter as much.
But when you care about friendship
When you care about anyone else
You're not allowed to care only for yourself and what you want.
Yet still,  you cannot forget to look out for you,
Because you is the only you that you get.
Things that are hard will get easier with time.
The clocks keep ticking.
And for every generation,
Growing-up will continue to happen all-too soon.

Avoiding Your Problems

There's always something that we don't want to do.  And we are determined to put it off until the last possible minute...be it an essay for class or changing the baby's diaper, we wait until it absolutely cannot be put-off any longer to buck-up and get it done.
Why?
When you push things to the back of your mind, they slowly eat at you until they get taken care of.  You have math homework, and you're invited to go out with some friends.  So you go out.  But while out all you are going to be able to think about is the sixteen linear equations sitting on your desk waiting for you when you get back to the house... and your not even able to enjoy having a good time.
I've tried, this being my first year of college, to become a little better at doing things ahead of time.  My Professor Reimringer told us the story of his old college professor's "back burner" theory on my second day of his comp. class, and I feel a version of it applies nicely here.

Picture a Stove, with a pot sitting on the back right burner.
That pot is your problem.
Now turn the stove on.  Those hot, blue flames licking the bottom of the pot is the heat that gets worse and worse as your problem sits there, burning in the back of your mind.
It will just get hotter and hotter, more dangerous the longer it is ignored.
Now add water.
This is you finally aknowledging the issue, taking it into consideration.
The water sits and bubbles, boiling in the back of your brain.
Now add noodles, or some other simple ingredient.
This is you coming -up with the easiest possible way out of your problem.
You soon realize however it won't be that easy to solve.
So you throw some meat in there, some herbs and spices.
This is you taking the time to find a solution that will work, giving a problem all the ingredients needed to be solved properly in time.  Once you're finished, you can enjoy the freedom that comes with the piece-of-mind, knowing you did things correctly and as they should be done, creating the perfect recipe-solution.

Your going to be hit with a lot of problems in time, and putting them off only makes things worse.  So don't avoid them, be careful and take your time in doing things right, and you'll be much more satisfied with your ending result.
I tried applying this theory towards homework and it's been working wonders... who knew that the solution to getting things done was as simple as... well, doing them?
Smart teachers.

Don't Give-Up

I putzed around a little this morning before heading to my math class and arrived two minutes before eight. My professor was already handing around the clipboard for attendance so my eyes scanned to room fast for a spot.  They passed over a guy in a red MN sweatshirt, then snapped back to the open computer next to him.  I took my seat and went to turn on my screen... but the damn thing wouldn't start. I was getting frustrated, and he watched me struggle for a couple of minutes before laughing.  He reached over me and proceeded to push the one button on the whole machine that for some reason I hadn't been able to find... it was the power button.
How Convenient.
I thanked him and laughed at myself to ease the embarrassment a little.  He told me no problem, he worked on computers all the time.  I don't really know anyone in that class so I grabbed at the opportunity for conversation.
If there is one thing I've found in all my years on this earth, it's that people really like to talk about themselves.  It is a subject that they never get bored of,  and the more questions I asked him the more I learned about his story.
He had dropped out of both high school and college, after struggling socially and falling behind academically in his classes.  He tried woking a full-time job for a couple of years, before he found he was really un-happy with his career and came clean with himself about needing to get an education.  So he went back and had to pretty-much start from scratch.
We didn't get much done in our class, and we found ourselves getting further and further off-topic as we talked.  One line, that he said at the very beginning of our conversation, stuck with me a while.  Even after class had already finished and I'd closed out of the program, screen still on problem number one.  He had shaken his head hard and waved his hands in a giant "x" gesture as he'd told me,
"I thought school was bad, but my job was worse so I came back. Don't ever drop out of college, just don't.  Because without it things really just fricken suck."
You know, sometimes the most unexpected people remind you of the most important things in the most unexpected ways.
I think Kevin was reminding me of how important it is to never, ever give-up.  Because things, I find, really always do get better.  And we are all capable of doing anything we put our minds too, as long as we work hard and go-out and get it. Things don't always go as planned, we are all too well aware of this fact. Every now and then, your gonna have to start over from scratch.
And that is perfectly okay.

Flashbacks

I was on my way to work today and I was running late, as I pretty much always am.  I whipped my car out of the driveway, took off down the street, and rounded the corner to come face-to-feace with a small girl (no I didn't hit her.)  She had just gotten off of the school bus, a couple blocks down now, and was probably walking home.  I took a second glance at her.  She was all decked-out; light-up shoes, a Mudd back-pack, and a Finding Nemo lunch box, carrying what looked to me like a Disney Princess notebook.  My heart fell a little.
I really like college, only three hours a day in school, waking-up early but getting out at like ten and having the rest of your day to get things  done.  It's pretty nice.
But now here I was, headed to work, while she went home to watch cartoons and fight over the best pieces of furniture for her barbie house with her sisters.  I remember being that little.
I didn't feel old, but almost immediately I became aware of time. Ten, maybe eleven years ago I was that little girl.  Trading gell-pens on the playground and eating glue just because someone dared me too.  Back when my homework assignments were crafts and coloring, not two hour geology lectures and college algebra.
I'll admit... I'm not fully grown-up.  As I sit here I can tell you that there are crayons spewed all over my desk, and my keyboard is sitting on top of a brightly-colored Tinker Bell folder.  However, I am old enough to be aware of how young I can no longer be and act (in public at least.)
I wanted to pull over and tell her to have fun, to enjoy freedom from responsibilities and worries.  To put-off growing up as long as she can.  That these are her days to dream, imagine, and believe that anything is possible.
I thought about this all the way to work... I left for work at two thirty, and arrived at two forty.  It's supposed to take me thirty minutes to get to work.
I wonder if that little girl will ever  grow-up to be be as bad of a driver as I am.

On Broken Hearts

When I was little, I learned to draw a heart. My hearts' shapes' were always pretty funny-looking, and I'd spend hours of frustration trying to get them perfect.

You start your pencil at the top of the paper, you make a few curves and a point, until they meet back together at the start.  

It doesn't take long for you to learn that a small squiggly line down the center is how to draw a "broken" one.

In Saturday morning cartoons, you see Deedee's heart pop right out of the screen at you and shatter into a million pieces.  She simply picks-up the pieces, glues it back together, and sticks it back into her chest. Good as new. 

If only it were that easy.

I know someone, whom very recently put herself out there for the first time, and took a chance with her best friend, to be more.  They saw each other for a short while, things weren't working, and it ended.  Happens all the time, right?

Sadly, yes.  But with what consequences?  In high school today, relationships aren't usually had because they want to be together forever, they generally last a matter of months.  both then wait a handful of weeks before moving on to the next eligable bachelors. 

For many this is routine.

But what about for those who really want to have something special, who are serious about finding the chemistry and making it work.  The ones that don't say "I love you" without a pause of consideration first. What happens to them?  

I remember crying, for so long after my heart broke the first time.  As many have or will find-out, it's not "broken" because it bursts into a million pieces at your feet.  It's not just anther adjective.  Somebody knew what they were doing when they created the term.

That's exactly how it feels, physically and mentally you feel like you'll never be whole again.  You cry not only out of sadness but out of pain, and your arms wrap around your stomach to hold yourself together, not to keep your heart from falling out of your chest onto the floor.

The only real cure for this kind of pain? 

                         Time.

My mom always told me you will never forget the first person you ever loved, that somehow, they will always be there.  I believe this is true, however I don't see it needing t be a bad thing.  Going through such pain makes you stronger, possibly more careful, and more experienced for the next time that something good comes around the corner.  And it will come.  There's always someone out there, willing to take the time to help you put the pieces back together... sometimes, much faster than you'd think.  You've just got to give it time.

Love You S.L.

Every Face in a Different Place

In our lives, no matter how short, or how long, we will meet hundreds upon hundreds of people.  Now, I use the term "meet" very loosely.  You meet every customer that walks up to your register and orders a milkshake.  Every operator in india that takes his or her sweet time to actually help you with your technical problem on the telephone (after putting you on hold 50 gazzillion times to deal with lame elevator music), and every salesman that comes knocking on your front door.  But you can't know from a handshake, who they really are.  Handing them back their credit cards and wishing them a nice rest of their day really doesn't constitute as sitting down to coffee and dipping into their personal lives.  So do we choose those that we become close to?  Are we really the selective ones, or do they choose to know us?  Maybe there isn't any actual selective-choice-making happening at all.
If you walked up to an elderly couple in the mall and asked them how they met, I'm sure you'd get quite the story.  The point is, that it seems they've been together since dinos walked the planet, and for some odd reason saw something in one another that kept them together until Edison created the light bulb.
So the question is: How did two people who are so perfect for each other, manage to find each other among everyone they've met on a daily basis, in the first place?  What made that person different from every other face in the crowd?  How did they just manage to cross paths and decide to get to know one another?
Okay that was more than one question, pardon the typo.  But you see my point.
Some will argue pure coincidence, while others will defend fate.
I like to think a little of both have something to do with it, along with some genuine "purpose" thrown in.
Sure, there are people that I've met that I don't really care to know.  But then there are some that, without them, I don't know how my story would have made it this far.
Global is another concept.  What about those people all around the world?  We often forget that there are other countries, and that people exist on them.  Most of the time we forget that anything even exists outside our hometowns.  Will we ever meet them?  Will we ever get a chance to learn their stories, or be given the chance to let them change our own?
While we may never encounter everyone in our lifetime, all of the people we "meet" put together add up to every different kind of person one could possibly need to know, to get them through their worst times and put them through their best... Now how does that work out?
Coincidence, fate, or sheer dumb luck... I think it's a pretty incredible concept... One you can mull over while you sit at the table in the coffee shop by yourself because your friend choose not to show up on schedule for personal-life-dipping time :D Happy mulling.

Tough Love, A Short Story

(Note: There are three characters in this story)

They yell at her in German, her native language, for pulling the other girl's hair in school.
She's been sitting in this room for god-knows how many hours now.  They tell her to behave herself in school, or she will be kicked out, something her family can't afford.
They are immigrants, learning english fluently is essential, as well as getting a good education so she wont have to struggle like them.
Money is tight, she works the family gas station after school days, getting her homework done from behind the shield of the cash register.
The homework she is assigned is so much harder for her than it is for the other kids... some of the words she can't read, and she has to ask the teacher.
Her parents are not fluent in anything but German, and they can't get better jobs than the gas station because they lack an american education.
She knows they only want better for her, that's why they are so hard on her. She knows school is important, but she wants to be a kid.
They all play hopscotch and four-square after school, she has to wok and do school work...
it isn't fair.
Her parents tell her she doesn't have time to be a kid, she is already behind in school, "disadavanatged" they tell her.
Once they leave the room, she opens her bag and takes out a notebook.  She sharpens her pencil and sits on her bed.
Sitting up against her pillows, she turns to a blank page, and begins to write "I WIL NOT MISBEHAVE IN SCHOOL."
Just one of many lines.

*************************************************

She clears the dishes from the dinner table, her annoying brother thinks it's funny to move all the forks to the opposite side.  She picks one up and pretends to throw it at him.
Mom catches her and tells them both to cut it out. She asks if her homework is done, when she says she's yet to start it, she gets a scornful look and a swish to her bottom.
With that she races upstairs and turns on her desk light, but it wont turn on.
She goes out into the hall and finds her father cussing at the light in the bathroom. The electricity bill must not have gotten paid again. That happens sometimes.
She grabs a flashlight from the pantry and walks back upstairs, on the way she stops by the laundry room and picks up her hamper of hand-me-down clothes, the ones the kids at school make fun of her for wearing.
She puts her clothes away and takes out her book, she has a test tomorrow.
After an hour of taking notes and reading the chapter thoroughly, she looks out her window, it's late.  She takes a cold shower and dries herself off with an already wet towel.  The dryer must not be working well, that happens sometimes.
As she is just about to slip into sleep, she hears something hit her window... it's the boy across the pond throwing rocks.  He gestures from below, for her to come outside and talk with him, but she shakes her head and closes the window.
She can't go outside now, it's late and she needs sleep.
She has a test tomorrow.

***************************************************

She sits next to him in class.  His clothes are torn and ragged, like the ones the mechanic next door to her parents' gas station wears, dirty and stained.
He was poor, like her family, but poorer.  She asks him why his clothes are always so shabby, he says he has eight siblings.  He asks her why she talks funny, she say's it's because she doesn't know english very well yet.
He isn't eating at lunch again, so she goes over and sits next to him on the bench, her paper-sack bouncing by her side.  She asks why he doesn't eat, he says he's not hungry.  As if to argue with it's owner this stomach lets out a low growl.  She smiles and take out a sandwich.  She takes both sides and in a sad attempt manages to split it unevenly down the middle. She hands him the bigger half.  He looks embarassed, but eats quickly, as if he's afraid she will change her mind and take it back.
She likes sharing with him.  She pushes her lunch sack over to the side so that she can fit her books on the table, they are heavy in her lap.  He asks why she always carries so many books.  She says she has a lot of schoolwork, and it takes a long time because it's hard for her.
He asks her why she bothers then, to do it?
She smiles, and simply tells him she likes to learn.

Mike Holst

My Grandpa, Mike Holst, is an American writer from Crosslake MN. He has published twelve novels and  is a columnist for his town newspaper. His books are of the fiction genre, check them out at amazon.com, barnsandnoble.com, and iniverse.com.  Or Click on his picture to visit his online site and learn more about his story, and the stories he writes.

The "Gut Feeling"

You're about to walk out the door on your way to work.  You grab your coat off of the hanger, and your shoes off the shelf.  Half-way out of the main entrance to your house you glance upwards... the clouds are looking a little menacing... but there is sun.  From somewhere inside of you, the thought to grab that travel-sized umbrella rikoshays through your subconscious.  Running a little late, you shake it off and continue on your way.

Speeding down the freeway towards your exit some time later, quarter-sized droplets start to hammer the roof of your car.  You turn your wipers on full-speed as little streams race down either side of your windshield.  It's not, however, until you whip into a spot in the back of the lot that you go to get out of your car and realize... it's raining.  That glimmer of sunshine that you'd caught a glimpse of this morning is MIA.  Dark clouds cover the sky above you and you get a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach.  That little polka-dotted shield that's hanging in the upper-left corner of the door frame in the closet comes to the front of your mind... you should have grabbed that stupid umbrella when you had thought of it earlier.  You now get to enter your presentation for the district manager late, drenched, and out of breath from running to the tarp over the front door to the building.

We all experience them, telling us to grab a pencil from the drawer on our way to school, only to get to class and find out there is a pop-quiz on scantron that takes only answers written in #2 ink.  What are these little so-called "gut feelings" that pop-up from time-to-time?  And why don't we take the time to listen to them?  

I personally can't recall a time that one of these little thoughts ever hurt me, they always seem to be there only to help.  A reminder, so to speak.  

The mind is a very complex tool and if you ever have a spare moment, look-into it.  

It's like looking down at your hands and becoming aware that you move them without even thinking about it.  Or that your feet just do what you tell them too without giving it a second thought.  That one organ controls everything we do, without even making us think to do it.  Like grabbing a pencil or an umbrella, turning left at the fork in the road when your not sure and ending up exactly where you needed to be.  

It's a cool object.  It allows us to have our own thoughts and personality, to be our own person.  It helps us to remember things now and recover older memories from long ago.  It helps us to base our feelings on our decisions, and vise-versa.  Be thankful for the one you've got and use it to the best of your ability.  Listening to your feelings and your heart means doing what you know to be right. The phrase "Gut Feeling" follows shortly after another well known saying,"Use your head."

Welcome

Hi (: I hope you enjoy my writings, and I thank you for your time.