Some Words...

I sat and listened to a college graduation speech over the weekend and it had it's usual message of go far and achieve much but something that was said at the closing of the speech got me thinking (and that's always dangerous), "Be less cynical in your lives, say yes more often." I kept mulling those words over in my brain long after the speech had ended because most of the time I don't consider myself cynical but I do find myself saying no quite often. Do those two things go hand in hand? I thought maybe my definition of cynical was wrong so I looked it up, "Negative or pessimistic, as from world-weariness." Hmmmm, world weariness? I suppose I've been that many times in my life. It's hard not to be weary when you've experienced so much pain in your years of living, but I've always had a "I'm a survivor attitude," at least on the outside. When I'm honest with myself I have to admit that parts of me resemble a cynic. I've been cynical about love most of my life an although I've found what I believe is true love, I struggle on a daily basis to actually trust in it. There's some part of me that lays quietly waiting for it all to be a fantasy, for the love to be a lie so that the cynical part of myself - wins. Isn't that crazy? I often boast on the fact that I'm an optimist, always believing that in the end things will turn out better than when they started but now I'm discovering I'm kind of a hypocrite because while I'm painting my walls pretty with hope, on the inside I'm doubting that any color would be bright enough to chase away the gloom. And so then comes the word No. I say No more often than I realized. I say No to letting people see the real me, they may not like what I show them. I say No to trusting people enough to rely on them, they may let me down and then I'll be left the fool. I say No to letting people see that sometimes I'm not strong, they may feel pity for me. I say No too often. There in lies the heart of my cynical self.

So how do I change? How do we all become less cynical? How do we trust in the love we find to be exactly what it reveals itself to be? How do we stop expecting the worst to happen and start believing there is nothing worse than losing faith? How do we live our lives being less cynical and start saying yes more often? I suppose it begins right here...by leaning on the people stronger than we are. We're all teachers in this place right? Someone told me once that knowing where you need to be is half the battle of getting there.