Lessons From Cool Girls and Muppets

A girl at work today told me

Wait.  Let me stop right there. She is a girl at work, but she's also so much more because she's my crush.  I have a big 'ol crush on her that I can't totally put my finger on (which really is probably just a result of me being in a really non-committal mindset these days because I'm terrified of putting anything in writing or saying anything out loud lest it's the wrong thing and I've made a mistake that will change the course of my story in a way it was never intended to go.  But anyway, I digress).  But she's real cool, ya'll.  Real cool (but not that kind of 'cool girl' who's actually gross, she's the actually-is-cool kind).  Her name is ChrissAnn (cool name, right?) and she has a cool blog which is here but only go if you promise to come back even if it's out of pity because I promise you're going to get got by how COOL it is. It's ok.  She knows how I feel.

And I thought I saw her husband in his underwear, but it was actually Mario Lopez.  Another story, another day.

Anyway, she said that she read my recent posts and that (among other super nice affirming things) she was laughing about my daily annoyances of Dr. Pepper scares and all employees emails and that it wasn't really "spreading the love" but that she would have been annoyed too.  Which made me think... the ONLY things I've pledged to do here are 1. Be honest 2. Spread Love and 3. Keep going. But what if I honestly don't feel loving? Or don't feel like spreading it? (Yeah, i went there for a second too, but keep it PG....13).  Does honesty trump love? Or love honesty? Surely one isn't more important than the other.  (But I'm not officially stating that as my opinion since I'm not into declaring anything right now).  I will say this.  I don't think one has to trump the other.  I think in a perfect world, my honesty would always be loving, but sometimes it isn't.  And that's OK. I think it's OK as long as I (we) can recognize that.  No, I don't think we can all go around being jerk-wads and tell ourselves it's OK because "nobody's perfect", but nobody can connect to a false-positive and no one is Pippy Long-stocking all of the time.  Honesty is so important or how would we ever connect?  How would we know that omagod-thank-GOD-you're-as-confused-as-I-am-I-had-no-idea! But loving each other and supporting each other are important too.  And that's what I know.  I love this quote, and who better to say it than the man who is the voice of the Muppets:

“Watch out for each other. Love everyone and forgive everyone, including yourself. Forgive your anger. Forgive your guilt. Your shame. Your sadness. Embrace and open up your love, your joy, your truth, and most especially your heart.”- Jim Henson

We try.  We slip and mess up.  Sometimes we feel bad and sometimes we don't. But move on.  Forgive me, Paul, for being a jerk-wad about your email.  I hope you found the person who needed to send that FedEx to Ralph Schlissberg (but really? Schlissberg?)

So thanks, ChrissAnn, for sparking a little topic of mind-coffee for me today. I'm glad you did.  God you're cool.

love you guys.  Sometimes your emails annoy me and I bet mine do too.  I think that I think that's OK.
I'll keep ya posted-

- d