Today, we are celebrating Human Rights Day. It’s a cause worth fighting for. I know Humanitarian Day is August 19, but I want to honor humanitarians and missionaries on this day, too. They are, day-by-day, fighting for people’s basic needs all over the world; they spread hope, joy and love.
There is still much to be done.
As many of you know, I am a law student finishing up her degree, as we speak. The people below are some of the incredible lives that have inspired my journey as a human rights advocate. The injustices are real. The fight is real. The hope is real. The people are real. The love is real.
Whole Foods had gluten-free pop tarts as buy-one-get-one-free. It also had a sale on Coconut Milk “Nog.” There is true joy in Manhattan.
I also managed to trek in 20-something-degree weather (for my readers outside of the U.S., about -6 C?) for kale. Kale. Kale juice. Kale in all forms. You know? Kale is like potatoes; perfect in every way. Errgghh… I sound like one of those yoga-pant wearing, Soul Cycle obsessed, Turkish bath member, brunching Tribecalites (not too surprising since it was my home this past summer, I suppose). This love affair with kale is real.
Anyway, study hard. Keep sanity. Today, I mentioned the bar exam in conversation, and it felt like my heart stopped. Not good. So, I am trying to think about right now. Just right now. I am trying to keep the positive thoughts flowing. I am almost done. Soon, I will be on the last long vacay of my life (with the exception of maternity leave someday, but that won’t be a vacation). But this moment, right now (as the chair I am sitting in falls apart), I am thinking I will never have a moment like this again. [Sorry for the typos. YOLO.]
“It’s important to read a book, but also to hold the book, to smell the book…its perfume, its incense, it’s the dust of Egypt.”
Ray Bradbury (I am going to try this with my textbooks)
[Those sunglasses.]
“Remember this: You are lovely. You are tender and passionate and something that shouldn’t be loved halfheartedly.”
Karese Burrows
“Life becomes easier when you learn to accept an apology you never got.”
Robert Brault
“Good people are like candles; they burn themselves up to give others light.”
Turkish Proverb
“I think we meet certain people who stir something within us, as if we were born into slumber and now that we have encountered this other soul, we have awoken, dazed and groggy, but finally awake.”
T.B. LaBerge
“Solitude with God repairs the damage done by the fret and noise and clamor of the world.” Oswald Chambers
“The gospel destroys fearfulness because it tells us that nothing we can do will exhaust His love for us.” Tim Keller
[God is able to do exceedingly abundantly more than all that you ask or think.]
“There are only two days in the year that nothing can be done. One is called yesterday and the other is called tomorrow, so today is the right day to love, believe, do and mostly live.” Dalai Lama
“I like messy people; people who don’t fit in a box or stay between the lines, but whose integrity is greater than any rule book and whose loyalty is stronger than blood.” Jim Wern
“If you want to learn what someone fears losing, watch what they photograph.” Unknown
“God sometimes takes us into troubled waters not to drown us, but to cleanse us.”
Kusha Alagband
“Since everything here today might well be gone tomorrow, do you see how essential it is to live a holy life?” 2 Peter 3:11
“And if not, He is still good.” —based on Daniel 3:17-18
Michela Quattrociocche had her second daughter, Diamante, and she turned 26. Che emozione! I remember when Michela wasn’t a mom or even married yet. She is such a beautiful mom and wife. Below are some cute photos of her journey with her second pregnancy from her Instagram @michelaquattrociocche.
After the birth of her daughter, she posted, “Childbirth is the only blind date that results in meeting the love of your life.”
[Michela, her husband Alberto, and their daughter Aurora. Diamante is in her belly in this portrait.]
Congrats Michela! The Aquilani family continues to grow.
I read this today, and I loved it. Malcolm Muggeridge was a journalist (he interviewed Coco Chanel for crying out loud!), satirist, and spy (during WWII).
“I may, I suppose, regard myself as a relatively successful man. People occasionally stare at me in the streets: that’s fame. I can fairly easily earn enough to qualify for admission to the highest lopes of the internal revenue. That’s success. Furnished with money and even a little fame, even the elderly if they care to may partake of trendy diversions. That’s pleasure. It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote was sufficiently headed for me to persuade myself that it represented a serious impact on our time. That’s fulfillment. Yet I say to you and beg you to believe me. Multiply these tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing – less than nothing – a positive impediment measured against one draught of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who or what they are.” Malcolm Muggeridge
[Me, probably eight years old, being ridiculous at my abuelo’s house, wearing my grandmother’s nightgown.]
By: Gabriela Yareliz
Several people who were once closer to me (friends) have noted that I seem different but the same. It happens around the holidays, when people see you after a long time and when you are my age (going into my mid-twenties). This has made me think. I believe our essence remains, and while I may still be oblivious to some things in life, (*grin*) I like to think that I am different. We learn to love ourselves; we learn our worth; we learn to love others; we learn to let go; we dream; we idealize; we see reality; we break; we heal; we learn what we want; we go after what we want; we walk with God differently– I guess it’s called growing up.
So, while my essence is still the same, I am different from who I was as a kid, in high school and even in college. Thus, there are parts of this new womanhood that some have not seen, yet; especially those who don’t see me or communicate with me in the day-to-day. And that is ok. When you have friends for a long time, it kind of calls for getting to know each other all over again. We can’t box ourselves into who we were, though. The different me you see is still me. I am still weirdly philosophical, feisty and quirky, but I am also a serious independent professional with responsibilities, and I am an ambitious adventurer. I am becoming a woman, and I am not done.
This woman in the suit still carries the corduroy-wearing girl inside, I promise. But now, I am more, so much more.
It’s time to prepare for Sabbath. Friday means cleaning and jamming around my apartment (lots of Fifth Harmony, guys). I just received news that something I worked on with a colleague over the summer was extremely successful, and I am here celebrating that victory and blessing. The feeling you get when you are able to change someone’s reality into something better can’t be described.
This crazy week was on fleek. Anxiety is dripping off the walls at the law school, but it’s Friday, so let’s kick back and relax.
Soundtrack:
[Greetings from insomniac-attorney central. Keeping it classy, collected and so sleep deprived.]
You can only get a diamond if there is pressure.
“Who looked at you and said you were not worth it…? Because I look at you and wonder how you could be anything other than who you are, for you are as important as an ocean and all that lays underneath it, and a sky full of all the colors ever known. I look at you, and I wonder who could ever see anything else other [than] true beauty with a heartbeat.” T.B. LaBerge// Thoughts at 11:41 p.m.
When thinking about liability and lawyering:
“I love the rain. I love how it softens the outlines of things. The world becomes softly blurred, and I feel like I melt right into it.” Hanamoto Hagumi, Honey and Clover
“Some things are too strange and strong to be coincidences.”
Emery Allen
Come at me, vortex…
BE A SNOWFLAKE
Winter reminds me of when I saw Beauty and the Beast on ice as a young girl. It was magic.
Yes. [From Yasmin Sewell’s Instagram.]
“We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.” C.S. Lewis
I couldn’t help but dig this up, again. While studying, I was reading my notes on the Kunstler v. Galligan (1991) case. Oh Kunstler! The attorney who would jump on tables and yell in the court room. He walked through the very streets I walk, here in the Village. I published this post my first year of law school. Here we are in my last year of this blessed Juris Doctor degree, and I am still passionate about this speech, this man’s radical lawyering and his way of leaving no important thought unspoken. I still want to “disturb the universe”…
This should probably go under the “Chronicles of a Law Student” page where I update about things that go on as a 1L, but I found this to be so powerful that I wanted to share generally. Today I watched an excellent documentary on a controversial lawyer who defended civil liberties and fought racism, but He also was seen as a hypocrit and a bit crazy as his days came to a close; William (Bill) Kunstler. His daughters made the documentary in a way vindicating but also discovering the man their father was.
Though ego-centric and though he had questionable ethical reasoning behind his representation of certain clients, I can’t help but really, really respect him. I had read, in the past, cases he litigated, and it wasn’t until now that I found out, oh wow–he was the one who won that case.
2] BOSS INSPIRATION (to get me through finals, along with prayer and kale): Amal Clooney
3] Fifth Harmony dropped two music videos recently. One is a cover of one of the greatest Christmas songs (ever), the other is the long-awaited “Sledgehammer.”
I sing Camila’s part at the top of my lungs 😉
Dear Neighbors, #sorrynotsorry
4] Random Musings
Why don’t law textbooks come in audio form? Would someone be able to stay awake to read them for the actual recording?
When will I find glue that holds the binding of my Bible together? (My Bible keeps falling apart, sniffle.)
It would be fun to live in a gingerbread house, no?
Lady, I will not pay more than $10 for a juice with no kale (or even with kale, for that matter); you must be joking.
5] Walked into the conference call room today, and I saw that strange little poem on the wall. I never get it, but today, I was like Yes (I don’t know why Yes, but yes).
“The temple bell stops.
But the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers.” -Basho
6]
I love the fact that Girl Meets World has the same writers as Boy Meets World and that it brought back the original cast. The writing is melt-your-heart beautiful. Boy Meets World reunion on Dec. 5th!
7] From Christine Caine’s “First Things First”
We live by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).
“How misleading our perspective is for the things God calls us to do. We see problems. He sees possibilities. We see difficulty. He sees destiny.”-Christine Caine
Ok… I am off to study.
I just wanted to sprinkle around some things that have recently inspired me.
This is like Mandela’s Conversations with Myself, except not as deep.
I love the mysteries of the world and the new places I have not found, yet. I love my brothers who take blackmail photos of me while I sleep and then send them to me saying it’s sleeping beauty. Sometimes, I still check closets for Narnia. I get supreme joy from a pair of knee socks, and socks in general. I wear my watch on “the wrong hand,” and I don’t care. I believe in talking and sharing because I feel there are inexhaustible worlds within us. I can meet a random person on the street and cry with them if they need me to. I have been broken. I am pretty odd, but I’ve got moxie. I was the girl who played football on the snowy Michigan parking lot at recess and then went home to play with her American Girl dolls.
I’ve got Latin feistiness for opposing counsel and people who don’t do their jobs. I will make friends while standing in line to pay for something. I serenade people with random songs, especially while working. A particular Journey song makes my spirit soar. My favorite “Friend” is Phoebe. I want to believe in Peter Gabriel’s version of love. I believe in serendipity dipped in providence. I am addicted to walking. I don’t like ice cream trucks, jelly fish or the monster from the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer movie. Paper cuts remind me the struggle is real. I listen to Delilah and cry when certain people call in. I can sing too many Celine Dion songs. I would walk 500 miles.
Life has magic. Rain is meant to be danced in. I think small actions can change the course of the world as we know it. I am intrigued by Gandhi’s “experiments with truth”and apparently bald French-Algerian soccer players. I have faced adversity before, and I can face it again. I think of myself as a pro boxer in life, even without gloves on. I like boats and bodies of water. When I take naps, there is no telling when I will wake up. I have a wild imagination. I am not type A, no matter what Buzzfeed says. If I put my heart into something, it’s all there. There is no one I admire more than my mother. I could live in Converse sneakers forever. I believe eyes can speak words a mouth cannot. When an ambulance passes me by, I pray for whoever it’s on its way to help. I like drawing on windows and mirrors. I believe the future holds unknown treasures and miracles. I believe humor helps keep us sane, and life is a divine comedy.
Oh life! What was; what is; what will be. Life is beautiful, and there is no denying that.
GABRIELA YARELIZ 