I recently rediscovered Sylvia Plath's journal, which I had begun to read last year but never finished (because sometimes life gets in the way like that). But I love when this happens.. I love when I forget about something that I once enjoyed. It gives me the opportunity to fall in love with it all over again.

I deeply admire Sylvia Plath. This woman had beautiful, meaningful, intellectual, and introspective thoughts. 

Here's one:

"God, how I love it all. And who am I, God-whom-I-don't-believe-in? God-who-is-my-alter-ego? Suddenly the turn table switches to a higher speed, and in the whizzing that ensues I lose track of my identity. I act and react, and suddenly I wonder, "Where is the girl that I was last year? Two years ago?... What would she think of me now?" And I remember vaguely Tolstoy's argument about fate and inevitability and free will. As an act recedes into the past and becomes imbedded in the network of one's individuality it seems more and more a product of fate -- inevitable. However, an act in the immediate present seems to be more a product of free will."

words that have influenced my mind this week:

"I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. My love's not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either. I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. But I am not omniscient. I have to live my life, and it is the only one I'll ever have. And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time..."

-Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

I've always wondered what it would be like to live the life of another. Why I was placed in this body at this point of time, I do not know; and I will not know until I acquire the answers when I go somewhere greater, maybe God will tell me. But to live your own life with the curiosity of what it would be like to live the life of another - this can be both a futile and sympathetic curiosity. Futile in the sense that it will never happen. We can be compassionate and attempt to understand another human's life, but at the end of the day, we are still ourselves, and that is who we will remain. But it is also sympathetic; we can gain a sense of empathy and favor for the person's life that we are desiring to live as, to be placed in their shoes is extremely different from observing their life and creating our own ideas about what it would be like. 

Sylvia Plath said it right - we can not overlook our own lives, our own frailty, or our own subjective experiences because we are preoccupied, wondering what it would be like if we were another. 

"Do you know, 

that every day's

the first of the

rest of your life."

- Thriving Ivory, Angels On The Moon

Yes, I knew that. But have I thought about it? No. 

I can feel the brevity of my life, I can feel it slipping away, I am incapable of making it stop. And I hate that. 

But I am amazed at our ability to create our lives, to put our past behind us and step ahead.

When I hear the phrase "the rest of your life" I think of it as a whole. I hear people often asking, "what are you going to do with your life? What are the plans for the rest of your life?" I think that when I hear this (and I am assuming that this happens to others, too), I automatically assume that we are referring to the future, what is to come, instead of what is right here, right now. 

This moment right here, this living, breathing moment, is the rest of your life. Not tomorrow, not next week, it is right here. You are living it.

The rest of your life is a continuum of every moment that you life from this point on. 

This is a radical concept to understand; and if more of us did, it would change the way we live.