Is It Possible to Care Too Much?

So much has occurred these past few weeks. I graduated from my 2 year college with highest honors, and a very special award where the faculty and staff choose the recipient. But today is not a day for talking about myself. No, today is a day for contemplation and introspection.

Recent events and those past have got me to wondering, what is love? Can we truly define it? The Dictionary attempts to, describing love as "an intense feeling of deep affection". Sure, that may be the main definition in the English language, but once again words fail us where emotions run wild and tangle in innumerable and unforeseen factors. There are so many different kinds of love in this world. The love of friends (our chosen family), the love of a parent, the love that is truly joy for a personal passion, the love of blood family, and romanic love. Any of these have the ability to bring us great happiness, and yet, simultaneously bring us more pain than we ever thought was possible.

The first and the final of these can be two of the most destructive. With your friends you want to be there to help them, you don't want to see them be harmed. But I've learned sometimes all you can do is watch your friend walk off the edge of the cliff, then be there to pick them back up when they fall. This is a feeling of helplessness brought on by how much we care for those friends we love. To be helpless, powerless, to do something, anything, it hurts. You want to take your friend into your arms and tell them it will be okay. But truly it is not just your friend you wish to convince, it is yourself. You're trying to console and comfort your own fears, bring hope to yourself when there's nothing you can do except be there.

With someone you love, that love that drives you mad, that love that makes you do crazy things, this one is the one that changes you. It causes you to make rash decisions without thinking, and to ignore the good advice of your closest friends. Even when you know they're 100% right. This love is the one they talk about most in developmental psychology class. The one that happens in stages, and never really goes away, even when it fades. But what happens if such a love is unknown if it is shared, or even unrequited? This can be so inordinately painful that it in itself can drive us insane. When you care to a point that you just hope to the powers above that the other person is happy, even if it's not with you...it's awful. It's difficult to get over, to move on. It's even worse if this person is a friend as well. If time does not help, then what will? If you don't listen to the good advice of your best friends, then who will you listen to? Not your heart. It's too torn and confused. This is what most folks tend to listen to however, getting caught in a boomerang cycle that rips anew every time you believe you're properly healed again. In this case you have choices to change your life, to turn it around. Find someone new, let go of that which can never be and continue to be the best friend that you can be. Or you can stop all contact. Cut the person out of your life completely. Doesn't sound to appealing if this person has been a long time friend does it?

Time with those we love, is somehow taken for granted while we are experiencing it. Children want to spend time with their friends not mom and dad, grandchildren (no matter the age) wonder why they must go visit their boring grandparents once again, and we always feel as if there will be another time to spend with our friends and relations. This is unfortunately not true. That precious time can be ripped from us as fast as it was given. Love is something that as much as we may want it to know time upon occasion, does not. Do not sit around waiting for love. Go out and make your own, and never take time for granted.

This photo is from Whitepark Bay in County Antrim.

So It's Been A Year

Mind you, this is not the day I joined the pub. But rather the day I was introduced to Celtic Thunder.

This day one year ago, my friends and I were driving through the pouring rain to an awards banquet over an hours ride away. Being that we all had different tasted in music, we played "iPod shuffle". This is not an iPod on shuffle mind you. It's where each person takes a turn playing whatever music they want for a certain amount of time. We had the music turned low so the three of us could talk, when suddenly my 2 friends were chatting animatedly about the members of the group that was now playing over the speakers. They giggled about "the blonde one" and swooned over "the 'bad boy'". My curiosity was peaked, but frankly, I forgot about the whole thing other than a tune I didn't recognize being stuck in my head for a week. As was/is my "addiction" I was perusing iTunes for new music, when I remembered my friend mentioned this group...Celtic...something or another. To YouTube I went, and clicked on the first video with an icon featuring the so called "blonde one". The song was Heartland, and I was hooked at the first peal of thunder, and the roll of the drums. What was this amazingness? I needed to see more! Being that my friends were so giggly over Keith, I (naturally) had to watch all his songs first (at this time only The Show was released). Well, needless to say I didn't, couldn't, stop watching. Hour after hour, evening after evening, I was on YouTube watching these five ridiculously good looking Irishmen sing. After about a week I had most of the songs off the two albums that were released at the time, but alas! I wanted pictures. Who were these men who could so enrapture young American women. A few keystrokes into a Google query brought me an answer in the form of an official website complete with forum and a chat room. At this time I daren't enter the chat room, I'd never been in one before and I was wary. This aside, I began reading forum threads after checking out all the official news, the store, and of course the photographs. Still unsure of the entire chat & forum (I'd just gotten a Facebook the previous November), I became determined to read every post in every thread...and I did! This process took all of about a week before I joined up with these other folks who found this music, and the gentlemen singing it, so interesting. Still too shy to attempt the "chat room" I began posting around the form and started to find wonderful, kind, people. A few weeks in I became bold enough to venture into the chat which at the time, was separated from the forum and required a separate login ID. Never could I have anticipated what I'd stumbled across. Crazy birthday parties, chats till 4am (and later at times!), pub ghosts, virtual drinks, [blue] chats with the lads (yes I'll admit I thought it was fake at first. So sue me), but most of all there were the people...the Thunderheads.

People I am now proud to call my friends. I don't know what I'd do without you all! If I needed cheering all I had to do was login to the Pub and it was guaranteed I'd be laughing my bum off in 5 minutes or less. Sarah H, Sarah D, Essie, Beth, Cathey, Kelly, Maggie, Tri, Katie, Ghosty, Queeny, Maureen, Esther, Heather (all 3 of you!), Steph, April, Bern, and everyone else I can't can't possibly remember, you all helped me more than you will ever know. This time last year I was ready to quit school and was looking at 2 options. Getting a job here, or taking what little I had and moving overseas and working. Thanks to how you all impacted my life I stayed in school and am headed to university in the fall! I've also done many, many things I'd never have done before. If you'd have told me that I'd get in the car, drive (of all things!) to Canada, with people I'd never truly met before, to hear a group of five Irishmen sing, I'd have laughed in your face. But alas, that's precisely what I did! Perhaps the fact that my parents let me go without question should be even more surprising, considering it was the first time in my life I'd ever skipped class. But I think mom was just happy to see me happy again. These guys must be really good for this to have happened! Sure I'd spent tons of a gorgeous summer in front of my laptop as opposed to on the beach, but hey! I was laughing, smiling, what's this?! Not only did I set off for Canada, but also Baltimore, and Nashville (for a 24 hour trip no less!). That was just last year! This year I've already been off to QVC headquarters in PA to see the lads sing and ended up staying for 3 days, missing 75% of my college classes over St. Patrick's Day. But oh what a trip!! There was not more laughter to be heard for 10 counties at least. Later this year is already bringing a few other shows including a trip to Chicago. I've never been! Thanks to Celtic Thunder I've seen more of my gorgeous country in the last year than I have in my lifetime.

One of my friends who introduced me to Celtic Thunder just sadly shakes her head when I talk about the lads, or about the next adventure being planed to see them preform once again. The second, on the other hand, is all set to sit right up close with me at a show (with Meet & Greet) this November. Thanks to Celtic Thunder our friendship is the strongest it's ever been.

So a big giant THANK YOU to the lads, to Sharon Brown & Phil Coulter, but a massive THANK YOU to my fellow Thunderheads. You all are amazing, never forget that! I hope to be able to call you all my friends for many years to come. We're all very different people, with very different goals, all brought together by one thing, music. It's a powerful thing, and speaks to us on all levels. Never forget that, it's about the music, and no matter what the future may bring, we have that, and we have each other.

Now, I must get some sleep. Tomorrow is a girls night in with some friends, and the rest of the week holds visits from family, a graduate luncheon, an awards banquet, the graduation ceremony, Riverdance, and martial arts training. It's a crazy week ahead!

As Keith would say keep 'er lit!!!

Peace,
Elina

Here's the song that started it all.

How to Save a Life

It's been nearly a month since I've written here. Between exams and life in general, there just hasn't been time. My last final exam is tomorrow morning at 8am, and graduation is later this week. It's crazy. Everything is changing so fast. School, work, my friends...

Here's the question. What do you do when your friend is destroying themselves? Do you intervene and try to help, or do you let them continue towards the end of the cliff, and be there to pick them back up when they fall? Both have consequences. Stopping a self-destructive behavior can cause anger towards those attempting to help. Getting involved too late can be precisely that, too late. Both paths are risky in a friendship. You want to help because you care, because you don't want to loose your friend. This of course, does not just mean loosing a friendship. This means the true loss of a friend in the emotional, and purely physical, sense.

One of the worst things than watching a friend hurt themselves, is not knowing where to start, what to do. You can't simply sit back and do nothing. But you can't go charging headlong into something without a course of action. Not knowing the precise reasoning behind such ruinous actions makes helping even more difficult. Watching someone you care about, someone who has been in your life for a very long time, spiral down into darkness is a tough, and extremely painful thing to see. The only thing we can do is our best. We can be there through it all. Through the anger, the pain, the hurt, and finally the joy. The joy of being free of a torment which can crush until we no longer feel anything. Either that, or we feel so much we are simply incapable of taking anymore.

Peace,
Elina

This photo is from Killowen Point in County Down.