8:58 pm
Maybe I was too hard on smiling. My friend Yulia had this to say:
Yulia Laricheva sweet post. i smile waaaay too much. it’s because i’m just happy to be here and have the opportunity to just be alive. on the street i’ll pass a person & they’ll smile back & i’ll be taken aback since it’s creepy but then I realize that the…y smiled because I was smiling & that usually makes me happy. Then again you get the crazy people & the homeless in nyc so try not to let them see you smiling. smiling is a good thing, at least in my book since the other option is crying & that is not as fun as smiling. life is too beautiful to cry about, so just smile about it. funk the haters.
I agree with you completely. Yes Yulia, thank you for your reminder that smiling makes the world smile and in turn makes me happy. I just need to cut out the times I smile as a nervous reflex. And about the homeless. They need our smiles more then the good looking guy on the subway platform. Yes, its hard to look at their suffering, I know. It hard to look them in the eye and walk away with you heart in tact. But my experience is almost always the same. Whenever I smile or give a dollar to the homeless, they say “God bless you!” I always wondered about this. its so rare that someone says “God bless you!”, other then when you sneeze or Mexico. It is like being homeless, gave them some divine connection to God. They and only they can relay his blessing to us. Us, who think we have it all while they are on the street suffering.
I say “Thank you. God bless you too.”
Its Friday night and for me and the Jews it is the third night of Chanukah and Shabbat. I love all holidays and most of all I love rituals. Rituals bring me back to some other life before me, they ground me to the time of the year. The year can blend together into one long day for me but when I sprinkle my year with fun rituals, it comes to life. I love marking the Rosh Hashanah by dipping the apples into honey. Passover with a week of matzah. New Year with staying up until 12 and seeing the ball drop. Lighting candles is so simple, but when ever I light them, I am transported instantly to a time in a small village where the candles are the only source of light and all is quiet except the evening sounds of nature.
That is how I feel on those special Shabbats that I acknowledge, which are few and far in between. But I am having my Shabbat now. All work is done, all time can stop and there is a space for the spirit. Space in Time.
I worked hard all week despite my flu. I was in bed with my laptop, a to do list and a bottomless cup of tea with lemon and honey. Its Holiday time the ritual time of giving and giving is my business. My online store was blowing up with people buying gifts. I feel grateful, because, strategically speaking, its what I’ve been wanting for oliadesigns.com all these years. I love the Holidays, not just because its profitable time of year, but because I get to be a part of so many prezies! That moment that some sweet mom in San Diego unwraps that little box from her husband on Christmas morning, I am there. I am in the box.
I work with Corinne and Statomi and every Holiday season, we are transformed into Santa’s elves. We are cranking out present for all the cute customers. and we have a lot of cute customers. We have to work fast and we have to be efficient because every boy and girl has to get their presents on time for Christmas and Chanukah. And it is only December 3rd.
So back to the ritual. The ritual time of giving is undeniably in the air. Its not the commercials for me because I don’t own a tv. Its not the media because I don’t follow it. Its is just the time to give like the harvest time is to harvest. Maybe its just me, but I just feel it.
10:03 pm
Olia Rights 