Notebooks

I just love the look, feel, and smell of a fresh, unused notebook! It has no mistakes in it, no blotted out words, no improper spelling or grammar. It can hold it's head high unabashedly! (Metaphorically speaking, of course). Then we come along and write, or draw in it, and the new crisp look, feel, and smell all go away quickly. The notebook enters a new stage in it's existence, a stage when it gets utilized. So many different things can be written or drawn inside it! What it will contain all depends on the owner of that notebook. Maybe it will be used as scratch paper for math, maybe it will be used for quickly jotted down notes (after all, it is a notebook!). Maybe someone will use it as a journal, and it will hold the secrets, dreams and daily life. Or, a writer might make an outline of a story in it! The mystery of what the notebook will hold can only be known one page at a time. Poetry? The thought of someone spilled out on paper? Or just a plain shopping list?! The notebook has so much potential. The notebook might not know what it will hold, but it will hold something. Every notebook has something different written in it. No two are exactly alike! They could be used for purely practical use, or just the musing of a imaginative person (guilty as charged!). Despite the numerous ways each notebook could be used, they all start out more or less the same. Blank, lined pages, waiting to be filled. They may have white pages, yellow pages, purple pages, pink pages, any color of pages. They come in different sizes: big, small, pocket sized, and extra large! They come looking different, yet the same. Every one of them will have something unique from any other notebook inside of them. Some of them maybe used for similar purposes, but they will all have at least slightly different contents. When the notebook it all used up, they will tell a different story when you look inside of them. That brings me to the third stage in the notebooks existence: when all it's pages are filled. What happens to it then? The notebook either gets put in a place of honor, forgotten about, stored away to look at again sometime in the distant future, or is pitched. If a notebook has been put in a place of honor, then we can safely assume that it has something inside it that is extremely valuable to whoever owns it. If the notebook is just forgotten about, but not thrown-away, then we can assume that it has something of importance in it, but not of enough importance to merit keeping careful track of it. If the notebook is being kept someplace where it's easily accessed, but isn't actually accessed that often, then we can assume it's contents are valuable, but not necessarily something that one would want to be reminded of every day. Lastly, if the notebook is just discarded, then one can assume it has nothing of importance in it, and the notebook was pretty much a waste.

Okay, so, sorry if I bored you to death with that blabber up there, but I do love notebooks. Of course I have a reason for going to such lengths to discuss notebooks, (if I had no other reason to discuss them other than to convey to ya'll my love for 'em, then I probably wouldn't be posting about it...I might though, lol). Maybe some of you have caught on to what I'm going to say here, but for those of you who haven't, here I go. I want to liken these notebooks to us humans. We all start about the same. Sure some of us will have lighter or darker skin, some of us will be bigger, smaller, shorter, taller, but, really, there isn't much of a difference with us yet. Eventually others start to see our unique personalities, as they start to show through as we get a little older. All our lives, our physical appearance will probably stay mostly the same, we may be scarred, but in the end, we have a human body, and no matter how malformed it may become, it is still just that: a human body! It is what is inside that body that counts (and of course I'm NOT talking tissue, blood, bones...yeah, you get me). All of us will have very different lives, some of us may have similar things happen to us, but, in the end, each of us has a individually unique experience of life. No one has had the same exact experiences as you, or I, and no one ever will. Each one of our notebooks of life, holds a different story. The primary question then is: what is the story? Is it something others will want to look on, something that will be put up in a place of honor? Will you be well known everywhere, someone who will be in the history books? Will you be remembered as someone who made a difference? Will people who know you, see your life and examine themselves because of you? Will you inspire people to become better? Will you be a reflection of the most high God? Will people you know look back on your life, and use it as an example of how they should be living theirs? Will your life be remembered?

Or will your life be one that was wasted? 

You can't control everything that goes into your notebook, but you can decide how you'll respond to everything, and how you respond is what people will remember.