Dear Cutie-Pie,
Recently, your mother and I were searching for an answer on Google. Halfway through entering the question, Google returned a list of the most popular searches in the world. Perched at the top of the list was “How to keep him interested.”
It startled me. I scanned several of the countless articles about how to be sexy and sexual, when to bring him a beer versus a sandwich, and the ways to make him feel smart and superior.
And I got angry.
Little One, it is not, has never been, and never will be your job to “keep him interested.”
Little One, your only task is to know deeply in your soul—in that unshakeable place that isn’t rattled by rejection and loss and ego—that you are worthy of interest. (If you can remember that everyone else is worthy of interest also, the battle of your life will be mostly won. But that is a letter for another day.)
If you can trust your worth in this way, you will be attractive in the most important sense of the word: you will attract a boy who is both capable of interest and who wants to spend his one life investing all of his interest in you.
Little One, I want to tell you about the boy who doesn’t need to be keptinterested, because he knows you are interesting:
I don’t care if he puts his elbows on the dinner table—as long as he puts his eyes on the way your nose scrunches when you smile. And then can’t stop looking.
I don’t care if he can’t play a bit of golf with me—as long as he can play with the children you give him and revel in all the glorious and frustrating ways they are just like you.
I don’t care if he doesn’t follow his wallet—as long as he follows his heart and it always leads him back to you.
I don’t care if he is strong—as long as he gives you the space to exercise the strength that is in your heart.
I couldn’t care less how he votes—as long as he wakes up every morning and daily elects you to a place of honor in your home and a place of reverence in his heart.
I don’t care about the color of his skin—as long as he paints the canvas of your lives with brushstrokes of patience, and sacrifice, and vulnerability, and tenderness.
I don’t care if he was raised in this religion or that religion or no religion—as long as he was raised to value the sacred and to know every moment of life, and every moment of life with you, is deeply sacred.
In the end, Little One, if you stumble across a man like that and he and I have nothing else in common, we will have the most important thing in common:
You.
Because in the end, Little One, the only thing you should have to do to “keep him interested” is to be you.
Your eternally interested guy,
Daddy
———
This post is, of course, dedicated to my daughter, my Cutie-Pie. But I also want to dedicate it beyond her.
I wrote it for my wife, who has courageously held on to her sense of worth and has always held me accountable to being that kind of “boy.”
I wrote it for every grown woman I have met inside and outside of my therapy office—the women who have never known this voice of a Daddy.
And I wrote it for the generation of boys-becoming-men who need to be reminded of what is really important—my little girl finding a loving, lifelong companion is dependent upon at least one of you figuring this out. I’m praying for you.
(Source: onlinecounsellingcollege, via theitunurse)
I hope this is a joke.
But I fear not.So much ignorance.
I don’t know where to start and who to blame. These kids were not educated with open minds. They were educated with narrow ones. Or perhaps they just didnt listen in class? In my high school, we had the option of taking World Religion and I took it. It at least gave me a bit of insight about other religions but even in my own religion, I am still learning and growing in my faith. There is no right or wrong religion. I just….so many emotions.
To simply say that these two Christians “meant well” and wanted to “save Sara’s soul” is really sugar coating it. What this was was borderline harassment and quite racist. It reeks of white supremacy, unintentionally, and offers a modern look into the whole “white man teaching savages the right way” history. These kids are sending the wrong message and are quite medieval about their views.
I could go on and on but I won’t even bother right now. The minute she labelled her friends as “one is Indian and the other is white” set the tone of the vid. Every second of that 9-min vid was painful to listen to and makes me really wonder where the education system has gone wrong with the Religion curriculum that these ignorant views continue to surface. Public school or not, what is going on? And also to add, how about their Geography lessons? I do not want to get started on that whole Africa and Asia bit. i just cant. I really hope that this vid is a joke.
Love not hate, people. Love. I think we all need to listen to The Beatles again because all we need is love.
(Source: glucous)
“I have a long-brewing theory that Martin is the world’s most cynical romantic. I’ve never yet read a Martin novel or story that ended in utter despair for any character who hadn’t thoroughly earned it—and I’ve read him extensively, from his 1977 debut novel, Dying Of The Light, to his many short-story collections and the entire Song Of Ice And Fire series. His work has always embraced bleakness, loneliness, and hardship, with tough-minded people muddling through traumas that perpetually threaten to break them. His protagonists rarely get exactly what they want; often, they can consider themselves lucky if they become wise enough to realize they wanted the wrong thing. His characters often make hard, ugly choices to survive, but those choices make them stronger and fiercer, and more capable of protecting themselves from the hatefulness of the predatory worlds they live in.
Martin’s cynical side can be overpowering: Characters who start his stories with naïve faith in honor, loyalty, or love—especially their own one-sided, demanding love, as opposed to a mutual bond—are commonly punished for their beliefs. But his romantic side holds just as steady, with the most steadfast and worthy characters prevailing. As I put it in that Gateways, “For a man whose writing is so often ruthless and uncompromising, he has a hell of a sentimental streak when it comes to questions of injustice, honor, nobility, personal dignity against long odds, and wrongs that need to be righted at any cost.”
I’ve said this over and over when writing about Martin’s work. What he does better than any author I’ve ever encountered—what defines his writing for me—is his masterful skill at exploiting the tension between the desire for justice and the availability of that justice. But that doesn’t mean there is no justice, just that it’s always hard-won and thoroughly earned. Robb and Catelyn’s grotesque ends complicate the search for justice considerably, and move it far into the future. But it doesn’t make the quest impossible. It just means it’ll be that much sweeter and that much more satisfying when it finally arrives.”
(Source: thedimestoredramatic)
(Source: lovelyydarkanddeep, via achristianromantic)
An Introduction to Black Holes.
Defined as “A dense, compact object whose gravitational pull is so strong that - within a certain distance of it - nothing can escape, not even light. Black holes are thought to result from the collapse of certain very massive stars at the ends of their evolution.”
Learn more about black holes here, and here. View images of black holes here.
(via asapscience)
An American Army doctor operates on a U.S. soldier wounded by a Japanese sniper in an underground surgery room behind the front lines on Bougainville, December 13, 1943 (Source)
Frederic Chopin - Nocturne No. 2 in D-flat Major, Op. 27 - Dinu Lipatti
Ready for bed?
