Peter Pan

Last week a long time friend of mine announced that he and his wife were expecting a baby. The exciting news drew the obviously happy response, but my friend Peter had a different take:

"it's about time he grew up"

I should preface that unlike a lot of my friends who have done that marriage and kids route now, Jeff is 40. It's not that Peter isn't happy for him, he just thought it was time for Jeff to "grow up" as it were and start a family.....his comment got me thinking....is this what growing up is?

If having kids means growing up....does that mean I'll never grow up? I laugh when people ask me about kids and are shocked to find out I don't actually want them. People seem to think that being a woman means having kids....but I honestly don't want them....I was always my dolls teacher and not their mother, I like babies, but not kids, and as much as I sit and think about it, its just not a life I can see for myself.

So am I not a grown up? Does deciding on a career, making the tough choice to relocate to a new city and go back to school not make me an adult? Will I always be looked at by others as the Peter Pan of sorts because I can't seem to get myself together, get a white picket fence and a snugli?

I can't think that I'm alone in this, and I'm going to make the almost cliche argument that more women don't kids but fear the "WHAT?? You don't want kids?" reaction. While I'm used to the reaction, it once bothered me. Why is it so weird? Lots of people don't go to college, lots of people don't ever leave the town they grew up in....and lots of people don't have babies.

What I'm getting at here is a baby doesn't make the adult. We are the only ones who can decide when we are grown up, if we want to grow up, and what we define growing up as. We are the only ones who can make and define our own adulthood.

Let Peter Pan fly.

Focus on Your Own Mat

That's what they tell you in yoga: focus on your own mat. The idea around this saying is to not concern yourself with what others are doing around you. In the world of yoga it means not worrying about whether your back is as straight as the person next to you, or if the person at the front can hold a pose for longer than you can or has better balance, but rather to focus solely on yourself and what you want to accomplish and take away from that class.

While in a yoga class with strangers the idea of focusing on your mat for an hour may be easy, but is focusing on your own mat that easy when you are surrounded by friends, family, colleagues and the like? The goal and purpose remains the same: to do things for yourself with only you in mind, and to block out the opinions of others. While the opinions of others matter to us, in the end the decisions we makes as our and have to function for us alone.

As I make my way through my post grad program, I'm reminded more than ever of the importance of focusing on my own mat. While the decision to move to Toronto and enroll in college raised a few eyebrows in and of itself, it was the best decision I could have made. The next 8 months need to be focused on my career and myself.

Focusing on yourself isn't selfish, in fact it's just the opposite, it allows you to give your best to people and be the best friend, son, daughter, brother, or whatever. At the end of the day, nobody knows their mat better than you so look at your mat, and you would be surprised at how good you feel when you aren't distracted by everyone else's downward dog.

Bulletproof

6 months ago, I loaded everything I owned into a moving van, and drove away from Ottawa having no idea what the hell I was going to do with my life.

Ironically enough, a year earlier to my tearful departure, Jon and I rolled into Ottawa feeling like the world was at our fingertips and that the start of our big boy and girl post-university lives were about to begin.

Somewhere between September 08 and September 09 it all unraveled.

I used to think that that was the worst thing that could have happened, but it turns out it was the best.

In the last 6 months, I moved to London, learned I would be ok on my own, and packed up my stuff and left before the dust had time to settle on my stereo.

I visited the West Coast and learned that sometimes standing up for yourself means losing people you love. I also learned that forgiving and forgetting is almost impossible....both the forgiving and the forgetting. It's impossible to forgive if you can't forget, and if you can't forget, then you really haven't forgiven at all.

I learned that the city I avoided for so long for different reasons is actually the place I love the most and the place I have felt most at home in a very long time.

I've realized that not every person stays in your life forever, that your friendships will change, grow, blossom, and even sometimes wilt. I lost a close friend because I couldn't compete with history, and while I still miss him, I'm ok with the separation. If he and I reconcile, that would be great and if we don't, that's ok too. I've also learned that the people who don't love your flaws, don't love you at all.

I learned that my arts degree is in fact not useless and that realizing the career path I want to take is just as satisfying as landing the job itself.

I've realized that 26 is in fact not old and that you really are as old as you allow yourself to feel. I've learned that being an adult does not make me immune to school girl crushes, temper tantrums, goofing off, and partying a little too hard.....and that that's ok.

The last 6 months have been exactly what I needed.

I learned I'm bulletproof.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Don't you love when a new song comes out? It's just so damn catchy and fun you listen to it over and over and over. It's stuck in your head at the office, you run with it on the treadmill, it keeps you entertained on the subway, it's just a damn good song.

Then the day comes when that song starts to wear a little thin, and you start mixing it up with other things on your ipod. You still like that song, but the lyrics are starting to get a little mundane, yet you can seem to shake that beat.

Then you start to get irritated when your ipod shuffles to that song, or you hear it on the radio. The song you once loved and couldn't get enough of is really starting to get on your nerves because you haven't listened to anything else.....you've gotten past the catch beat and are really starting to think about the lyrics and you start to ask yourself....do these lyrics even make sense?

Can relationships be the same way? Do we often hang out with the same person over and over and over, almost in some sort of hypnotic friendship trance until suddenly we get sick of them? Or do you have that moment one day when you realize that despite the fun things you do and the catchy one liners that sometimes come out of their mouth, that their lyrics actually don't make sense?

Do some friendships have the shelf life of a top forty hit? We all have our classics that never get old but do some people really tire out faster than Britney can hit and fall off of the charts? And is this necessarily a bad thing? I think we put pressure on ourselves to maintain every single friendship in our lives despite whether they still work for us or not, but the truth is, people come and go. People change, some people don't change, people fight, we learn what we can forgive, and we learn that we can't always forget.

So maybe you'll smile when you hear that catchy tune you were once so obsessed with, and realize that it's not your tune after all.

Changeling

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.

-Alan Cohen

I'm listening to Rhianna's new album wondering what everyone is so upset about. I like the album, the sound is different but the lyrics actually mean something. It's definitely a different sound from songs like "Pon De Replay" and "Disturbia" but change can be good. It started to make me wonder why we all seem to fear change so much? Change is natural in every aspect of life; we change what we study, where we live, where we work, who we talk to you, where we party, who we sleep with, all of it eventually changes. The old adage is that change is good, but if that's true, why do we fight the change so much? Why do we still refer to our parents house as "home", stay in relationships that don't work, avoid confrontation, and generally shy away from things that bring change to our "normal" world. The things we have done day after day, the people we have spoken to, the little routines that we have developed all seem impossible to break and so we sometimes cling to them, but what happens when our desire to hold on to people, places, or things becomes destructive? What happens when our desire to hold on to something that is somewhere else impedes our desire to appreciate what is right in front of us.

So Rhianna sounds different. the truth is we all sound different than we did yesterday, a year ago, or even a decade ago. Our values have changed, our beliefs have most likely altered, what we hold near and dear is probably not the same, and what we thought was important then is probably laughable to us now. And that's ok. Change brings opportunity. And while change can also bring moments of uncertainty, loneliness, and pain, change is always empowering as it forces us not only to evaluate our situation, but ourselves as individuals.

So while it may seem like holding on to what is overly familiar is safe, it could actually be the most dangerous thing. So when do we know when it's time for change? When do we decide we are ready to release the people, places, or things in our life that were once so familiar and friendly? The truth is only an individual can truly decide when change is good for them and the decision is always hard whether that change be a new city, or a new hairstyle. But making the choice to make the change is the most empowering decision.

What are you going to change today?

No "Homo"

When the movie "Crash" was released, Don Cheadle raised the eyebrows and voices of many, including Oprah, when he suggested that African American people should still be allowed to use the term "nigger" or "nigga" as he pronounced it because it was a term that belonged to them, therefore they could use it as they pleased. Cheadle went on to suggest that people outside the African American community didn't have the rights to the word because they don't have a direct relation to slavery and the associations that come with it. Jay-Z uses the word in the hopes of mainstreaming it, or taking the shock out of it, thereby reducing it's power, which is still questioned by many.

I started thinking about this because the term "homo" is thrown around quite a bit at work by many of my gay co workers. They refer to themselves as homos, call each other homos, call straight people homos, and don't seem offended by the term at all. I personally have never used the term with my gay friends, and always found that it still carried a negative connotation, it was never a word I was comfortable using. Yet when I started working at Starbucks, and the word was thrown around on a daily basis, I will admit that I found myself using it. Saying "hey homo" or "you are a homo" with my friends who introduced me to the more "free spirited" use of the word suddenly became the norm until my friend Vash stepped up at work and said he didn't like it. Vash is gay and one of my other co workers Michel questioned his distaste for the word...."What? I'm a homo, you're a homo....we're both homos, accept it". Michel associated Vash's dislike of the word with a dislike or shame around his own sexuality, and saw his own use of the word as a proclamation of sorts of his individual gay pride.

While I know that Vash is proud of his own sexuality, it made me wonder what words exist in the straight community that are considered taboo. The first one I could think of was "cunt". I can't think of a women who appreciates it, understands the use of it, or in fact uses it herself. The word is barely used as a metaphor for a vagina anymore, it's basically morphed into the worst insult you can sling at a girl. Women have started calling their friends their "bitches" but if you call a girl a cunt, it usually signifies a hatred beyond all recognition, and even then still gets alot of eyebrow raises.

So what do we do with these words? Do we use and abuse them as a means of devaluing them? Do we throw them away and not acknowledge their existence? Or do we find a way to integrate them into our vocabulary in a way that makes everyone happy. Well the last one we know isn't possible because just like the "n" word, not everyone will agree. But I don't think erasing these words is a positive thing. I personally like the evolution of bitch....it's gone from something derogatory to something almost empowering. One of my favorite songs, a song that some of my friends have dubbed my "theme song" is David Guetta's "Sexy Bitch". Our girlfriends (and some of our guy friends) are our bitches....I referred to my good friend Meesa today as "my bitch" because she's that girl I know will always have my back. Meesa told me tonight to go out there and be "the pretty bitch you are" giving bitch a sense of strength and power. So can what's been done for bitch be done for homo? I think that's a question only the gay community can answer, and not every homosexual will feel the same way, but not everyone will ever feel the same way.

However, I think to say that these words have no place at all in society is naive, because whether they exist to show us how far we've come as an accepting society, or as a word that only gay people feel they can use, the words have a place and putting them in the a bottle and tossing them out the perverbial isn't going to make them wash up on a shore of acceptance and tolerance on day, in fact, I think erasing them may do just the opposite. We can only see how far we've come if we have the ability to look back at where we started. And maybe, the fact that we still debate these words shows us that we might not have all come as far as we would like to think.

Sabotage

Girls are bitches. Plain and Simple.

Being a girl has become a constant game of sabotage. We compete with each other, become jealous of each other, fight with each other, talk about each other, the list goes on and on but what is becoming very apparent is that try as one might, some girls just can't avoid this. I used to question why this was, why girls would get jealous, or territorial, or possesive for seemingly no reason, and for some reason while steaming a jug of non fat milk tonight, stewing about an issue that has been driving me nuts for quite some time, I had my revelation:

Strong, confident women will always be the targets. It doesn't matter how nice we try to be, how friendly we are, or how non threatening we try to make ourselves be, if you have confidence, there is always going to be some insecure girl in the room who decides that the only way she can combat this is to make you the "bitch". At this point in my life, I've fought it long enough. We can keep trying, but some things will never change. I'd rather be the confident "bitch" than the immature and insecure girl who can't find a better way to feel better about herself.

The real pisser to the entire situation is when the insecurities of these girls infiltrate your friendships with other people and suddenly erode them to the point of nothing but total bitterness and resentment. At this point, the confident girl loses the battle to the insecure one and becomes the bitch. And the insecure girl wins, because people always seem to assume that the confident "tough" one is the one picking on the poor little insecure girl, when really, confidence has become a bullseye in the middle of your back, begging for someone to stab it.

Ladies, it's bullshit. Lay off each other. We should be fighting for the same things together, not fighting with each other! Confident girls shouldn't be punished or labelled, and the insecure and meek should not inherit the world.