Finals. Blah.

I'm already doing a not-so-good job at keeping up with this blog.  My bad.

It's about that time of year for finals.....again.  Oh the joys: empty, crushed cans of Red Bull piled in the corners of rooms, full cans of Red Bull in mini-fridges calling the names of their owners, textbooks, novels, notes, Sparknotes, 5-Hour Energy, highlighters, the jail-turned walls of libraries, [adderall,] half empty bags of Doritos, Ramem noodles, Monster, left-over pizza, [adderall,] late nights, the annoying buzz/rings of alarm clocks on early mornings, review/cram sessions, learning/re-learning, [adderall,] and the list goes on.

Meanwhile most of the mind's attention seems to be less on the study material and more on those little voices that we don't like to admit exist in our heads that say things such as, "This better be worth it," "Why am I in school?" "I hate school," "I didn't learn shit," "Why is everyone done with school but me!?" and so on and so forth.

What do you know?  What did you memorize?  What did you forget?  Why do you know what you know, memorize what you do just for an exam, and forget the things you forget?  Well, I can't answer that; but if you think about it I'm sure you can come up with some answers for yourself.

I don't really have much else to say about finals except, "You can do it!".................I'll get back to studying now.

*Note: This was posted on May 11th, 2011; Blogger had technical difficulties that ended up deleting all posts put up that day.  They finally recovered it, and here it is for those who never got to read it.*

Sensations.

Do you know what it feels like to feel?  To feel a sensation.  When was the last time you felt the presence of the clothes on your skin?  Or the last time you felt the water you drank soothe your throat?  Or the last time you actually TASTED every detail and felt the texture of the food you ate?  Or even the last time you took the time to look at the ability of your fingers and toes to move?

I felt like I was living my life day-to-day.  Not in the, "take it one day at a time," way; but in the way that made me feel as if I was here just to work and take care of my body enough so that I can make a living to merely live through the next day.  I wasn't recognizing the pleasures in life––those pleasure that I was receiving through my senses every moment that I was awake.

It was when I started randomly taking moments out of my walks to class to stop for a second and take a deep breath to realize that I am inhaling the air around me to give me life and exhaling to give the world around me life.  Recognizing my breath, the feeling it gave me when the cool air went up my nose and filled up my lungs and the feeling it gave me to release that air, started making me more appreciative of life.  I felt...."here," or better put, I felt my own presence. 

Apparently, thinking with an open mind wasn't enough for me; it was when I started thinking with an open heart and FEELING every experience my senses went through that the world around me became more beautiful than it already was.  Everything, every creation amazes me, and I love that feeling.

This snickerdoodle I'm eating right now is SO much more now that I've forced myself to taste every ingredient that was put into it. Yum.