Live, Laugh, Love

I have been cleaning my room. My room hasn't been cleaned since we moved into this house but I'm making progress. It has been an exhausting euphoria to organize my past 16 years...or probably 23 years, if I think about it. I save everything. Everything. Eleanor's first bandaid? check. My mom's 35th birthday present she never received? check. Every single note I have passed since 6th grade, locked in a safe in case Mr. Hatch or my mom try to read them? check. Among the credit card offers (circa. 1998) and paper towels I saved because they had recipes printed on them (just in case I ever wanted to cook...oh wait, I found my cookbook too...and it still has just one recipe in it: instant jello pudding), I discovered a gem. I found an obituary I cut out when I was eleven or twelve, just because I loved it. The faded black and white picture of an old woman laughing is captioned with three words: Lived, Laughed, Loved. In the margin was a scribbled note in my childish cursive: 'idea for obituary'. Obviously, I learned from my mother who made little notes on everything...to do lists on napkins or ideas for gifts in the margins of magazines. Random newspaper clippings still pile up on my nightstand with information and ideas relevant to me and my life: Curvy Body Types, sunscreen, and my personal favorite 'My Conversion to Eternal Marriage'. I illustrated my childish wisdom by cutting out the obituary and pausing to think about how I want to live. So now, I can't help but analyze my life progress in these three areas of living, laughing and loving. I obviously have room for improvement but I hope I've earned those words beneath my obituary. And I hope in most of my pictures I’m smiling and laughing. I keep remembering that line from Serendipity: The Greeks didn't write obituaries. They only asked one question after a man died: "Did he have passion?"
Isn’t that everyone’s quest…to find their purpose? Finding what you love to do the most, searching for what gives your life meaning. Being in tune with who you really are and living a life of purpose. I used to think that I needed to find my passion or my calling in life but I don’t think passion is an end point or single extremity; it is ever evolving. It’s not always an isolated fervor, but motivated by countless people and ideas. Most often, the fulfillment of dreams is not achieved through glamorous serendipity but humble perseverance. I feel most alive during the trivial moments: playing stair-ball with Eleanor, late night chats with Annie or laughing with Richard and Romney. So at the end of my life, if my greatest contribution to the world is a completed family tree of Days of Our Lives and a recording of me singing all the wrong lyrics, I’ll still be happy.