Please Don’t Stop the Rain

What exactly is life? According to my dictionary, life is the existence of an individual human being or animal, the period between the birth and death of a living thing, a biography. We each get one; we each live one. How we choose to live it can be based on our decisions or based on another person’s decisions. How we choose to look at it is based on us and us alone. Two people could have the exact same life: a decent job, small family, financial problems, whatever. One might wake up every morning with a smile on his face, ready to start the day off and looking forward to whatever challenges he might face that day. If bad things come his way, he can get through it; if good things come his way, even better. His family isn’t perfect but they all care about each other, he doesn’t have the greatest job but it still gets them by. The other one might wake up every morning feeling sort of lost, like he needs something more. What he has isn’t good enough; he feels like he should be promoted, his family wasn’t the “trophy family” that he always thought he’d have, he wants a bigger house, all these problems at work are just putting more stress on him. So of course Positive Man goes to work, there are some problems but he handles them with a breeze. He comes back home to a happy family and they have a nice dinner together that evening. Negative Guy goes to work and there are the same problems but he just gets annoyed and doesn’t handle them very well, making him angry for the rest of the day. He goes home to a happy family but because he’s so stressed about work, he blows up at his kids for making too much noise while he’s trying to rest, changing the entire family’s mood for dinnertime. Why did Positive Man have such a better day? Well the answer’s obvious, isn’t it? You can live your life wanting more all the time, thinking that it will make everything better but the truth is, whether you have a bigger house or a better family, it won’t make all of your problems disappear. You can wake up not wanting to go through another day at your job and just look at everything that happens as a plot to make you miserable or you can wake up knowing that today’s going to be another great day because if it isn’t, you will make it be. Why do we always feel the need to point out why life sucks most of the time? Why when talking to friends, you tend to tell them more about what’s bothering you rather than telling them what’s really lifting your spirits? Change one letter in the word Love and it spells out Live. To love life is living; if you’re not enjoying it, you’re not living life at all.

The family left for the weekend so I just did whatever. Friday night, I was watching Don’t Forget the Lyrics! and a very familiar song came about. Go on youtube, look up Marylene by Martin Circus and tell me if you recognize it at all.. you should. Saturday morning, Adriana came over and we made pancakes and two different types of cookies: our own creation-type thing, and double chocolate chip. We (being the greedy people that we are) put them in our own separate bags and hid them in our rooms, away from the families; cookies don’t survive longer than a day with a French family. On Sunday, I just went to church and then went back to Rambouillet, where Adriana and I went out for lunch. I spent a lot of my free time watching the fourth season of Lost. Because I stupidly made a promise not to watch the fifth season until I got home, I have to find other ways to fill my life with my favourite TV show. One of those things, you ask? I bought myself a birthday present. Now what could I buy that is connected to Lost, and makes missing the fifth season so much more worth it? April 25th is Lost in Paris day! Yup, some cast members are coming to Paris and we all watch the first episode of the fifth season together! Of course, I’ll be on a balcony, probably quite far from them but I will be in the same room as some of the actors! I’m so excited and I’m looking forward to seeing which cast members are coming.

Even though the “Dedicated Readers” window doesn’t show it (which you should sign up on if you have not yet done so), there are actually now 40 people registered to read my blog. I don’t know how many people still actually read it on a regular basis but it really is comforting, knowing how many people want to hear about my life in France. We’re almost at the 3-more-months point! I really am looking forward to coming back home and seeing everyone this summer. It’s the last day of March, and April starts tomorrow so everyone, enjoy it! Love always
Please Don’t Stop the Rain – James Morrison