Aloha

I hate goodbyes. I'm really terrible at them. I try to hold back my emotions and I had been doing a pretty good job until my last couple days. I decided to replace goodbye" with "Aloha." It just sounds more cheerful that way. I know many people I will see again, but there are always those who I will not. I remember when I was on my mission I had to do it about every 6 weeks. Most of the people I met there I knew I wouldn't see again. While I was discussing with my trainer of why saying goodbye has to be so hard. She shared a quote that her uncle told her, "The only way to take the sting out of death is to take the love out of life." So, the only way to take the sting out of saying goodbye is to remove the love in a relationship. A man once said, "Grief is a by-product of love." A couple years later I was dealing with the death of my dog that I had for 13 years. It was pretty emotionally hard on me, even harder than some of the human deaths I had dealt with in life. I came to a realization of the emotional investment that people put into relationships, whether it be with family, pets, friends, crushes, co-workers, even jobs and homes. It's a kind of investment that I can never regret because it has brought more richness to my life. I don't look at time spent with the ones I care about -- whether it be a belly rub for my dog or staying up way past my bedtime to spend time with friends -- as wasted time. There are always things that we can focus our attention on, but some of those things will pass, become nothing more than a check-off an a to-do-list, or can be put off. This isn't an invitation to procrastinate, just re-evaluate your time with the people and things that make you happy and enrich your life.
**warm fuzzy**