Reading over Thanksgiving Break

I hope everyone has had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and if you're not from America, I hope you've had a fantastic weekend.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. There's no pressure to buy gifts, no pressure to be religious, it's just about eating and being with friends and family. My parents always have a massive Thanksgiving feast. They got married the day after Thanksgiving, so it's a very special time for them. This year, we had fourteen people over. It was fabulous.

As there are only two weeks of the semester left, I've been frantically working on homework. Managed to write ten pages in a paper yesterday and finish the research for a different paper. Today, I'm hoping to finish up both papers (one is significantly shorter than the other).

Last night, as a treat to myself, I read The Little Prince. Oh my god. I can't believe I've never read it before. It was absolutley beautiful, and caused a bit of a shift in my thinking. This semester has been particularly difficult emotionally, and I've been so stressed out for so long and trying to just stay on top of everything that I've been burned out for weeks. Just ... sad. But this book got me thinking.

I've been trying to reclaim happiness in my life. I've also been trying to figure out what to do with myself, what direction to take my Social Justice major, and life after college. I've realized lately that maybe, emotionally, I'm just not right for working people through conflict. Which had sort of been the original plan. I've been thinking, lately, that maybe I should look at arts for social change instead of women in conflict. I'm much better at that, and it's much more easy for me to sustain and still be happy.

Reading The Little Prince really makes me think that I should do something that allows me to be happy, to cultivate wisdom. I don't always want to have to be in therapy to deal with my job. I want to be happy, I want to have the energy to be creative. I don't think the path that I was going down was going to make me happy. I could already tell - it's been wearing on me.

In this beautiful little book, I feel like I've found permission to do what works for me. I can't really explain it, and I need to read the book several more times to get the full meaning of it, but I read it at a time when it was needed.

I read my mom's copy of it, and I told her how much I loved it. She gave it to me. That's the spirit of the book, right there. Generosity and love.

And everyone could use a little more of that in their lives.