Have Cheap Luggage, Will Travel

Beautiful pain and gooshy outsides

I met a girl today that said she wanted to teach film/photography in college because the students are always sad and she gets to love on them. Not that she loves teaching so much but that she loves broken people.

I have always thought that same thing but I just thought it was because I was a little messed up myself. Which has a lot to do with it but after some deep introspection over Starbucks, I really think I like broken sad people because to be broken and sad means that you actually have to care about something - to have passion. I bet that film students are all like that because it makes them better at their craft. Who wants to watch a movie that the director felt okay about? Maybe summer blockbusters fall in that category but I digress.

Passion and sadness. I bet that most people would not put the two together but for me being passionate means that you feel deeply about things and you are not afraid of that feeling whatever it is. People often hide their sadness because we humans look on sadness with pity. Why? Sadness to me seems like a great opportunity.

Can you ever really be known by people if they only know the happy sunshiny parts of you? More importantly, can you ever really know yourself if you are never challenged by the circumstances in your life?

To embrace sadness and be comfortable with it is to wear your insides on the outside. All gooshy and getting all over everybody. Kinda uncomfortable in a vulnerable way. I have some friends that are insides-on-the-outside people. They spend a lot of time in their house away from others because too many people have hurt their gooshy outsides – mostly Christians actually which confuses me because for some reason they want to be friends with me.

But you know - they know who they are. They wonder about careers and kids and all the stuff that the rest of us wonder about, but they do not wonder about WHO they are. Makes me jealous. I guess the lesson here for me is to be comfortable with my sadness around others and to be comfortable with my friend’s sadness without trying to fix it because it is beautiful.