You could replace your phone every 6 months every time there is a new version of Samsung Galaxy or Iphone.  Imagine that.  Or have at least 2 of the latest tablets in the market.  Maybe one Ipad Mini and one Kindle.  For those who love to read.  Or one Ipad 2 and one Samsung Tablet for those who love to play online games.  That would really be cool!

You could eat all the sumptuous food you have always wanted to try but could not afford.  How about that eat-all-you can buffet restaurant in that hotel that serves all the mouth-watering sense-overloading food from all the regions of this earth.  Wow, just imagine that.  What restaurant have you always wanted to go to but can’t?  And now, with lots of money, you can!  Maybe try another one for dinner next Sunday.  And another one for dinner Sunday after that.  And try another. . .  Now, you may need to spend money on gym memberships and the services of a good fitness instructor.  That’s not a problem.  You have money.

You don’t even need to work.  My God!  Isn’t wonderful?! You don’t need to endure your control-freak  boss.  No pesky client calls.  You don’t need to pretend you like your office mates.  All day, you can just play golf.  Or relax on a hammock in a paradise beach.

That’s the life!  You say.

How wonderful to dream.  But today, I woke up and realized I will never have all the money in this world.  And even if I will have (which is really very unlikely), imagine how purposeless and shallow that kind of life would be.   It would be nice to take a breather once in a while.  To go to a nice place once in a while.  Splurge on a new phone or tablet every 2 years.  Not bad.

But imagine, having all the money and having all the things and all the sense experiences that money can buy, every day of your life.  No work.  Just laze around and load your senses with “the good life” until you die.   I don’t know about you but to me, that would not equate, not even get close, to the meaning of a happy life or at least a bearable life.

Since this post is getting long, I’ll make my point and just insert the title here: The best things in life are still free (almost).  Things like the following:

• A good conversation with a good friend
• A solitary walk with nature
• Time to laugh and play with children
• Working in a job that you are passionate about
• Doing something that makes you feel that you are making a difference in others’ lives
• Waking up every day excited and grateful

Cheers to the real “good life”!  :-)

It’s my current favorite life-affirming-and-contagiously-danceable song.

American Authors – Best Day of My Life

Many have a go-to song every morning to set the mood for the rest of the day. If you’re looking for yours, this song has a great potential to fulfill that purpose.

Ra Ra Riot – Dance with Me

Regardless of whether you know how to dance or not, I think it’s important that you know at least one song that could make up get up on your feet and just dance your worries away. Case in point—

Crystal Fighters – Champion Sound

Ahh. New love. Sometimes you don’t have the right words to express just how happy you are. Maybe this song could help you out.

One Republic – Feel Again

Imagine the person you like looking straight in your eyes while singing this song. Feel your heart melting right on the spot. Ladies and ladies, it’s time to fall in love with an adorable Ginger.

Ed Sheeran – Lego House

Who ever said that you need to wallow in misery when you feel like you need to listen to a breakup song?

Sara Bareilles – Gonna Get Over You

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We’d love to hear your favorite songs! Let us know in the comments below.

I will precede this review by saying that I tend to root for the unlikely heroes. Fucked up Holden Caulfield. Cancer-stricken Augustus Waters. Emotionally unstable Franny Glass. Damaged but adorable Charlie. With all their physical, mental, and emotional turmoil, there is something beautiful that binds them all together: Hope. Hope is the littlest spark that leads into a wildfire in people’s hearts.

With that said, I find Pat Peoples (Pat Solitano in the movie) absolutely adorable. I like him not because he is awkward or funny without meaning to be funny, but because he always finds something good in everything. Sure, it may be because it’s part of his therapy, but I for one know how tough it is to do that: to always look for a silver lining even though there doesn’t seem to be one. I like Pat Peoples because he is determined and he has a good heart, despite his episodes and denial that his wife abandoned him. I like him because he believes that if he tried hard enough, people will love him.

But Tiffany. I love her because she is a consistent force in Pat’s life, regardless of how unaware he was in the beginning. I love her because she proved to him that he doesn’t have to try even a little bit for people to love him. Bless her heart—she loves his peculiarities, their unstable relationship, and the silence between them.

Frankly, I like how the movie wrapped up better than the book did. The movie was more polished and it retained all the important parts. The ending was also more romantic and knee-tingling. But there are a lot of awesome laugh-out-loud moments in the book. If you are going to read it, be cautious of where you are when you get to the Montage of My Life chapter. Others still think it’s weird when you laugh loudly in a public place while reading a book.

Except for the ending, The Silver Linings Playbooks is funny, optimistic, and delightful.

Yes, the novel has its flaws. Some of the parts dragged on longer than needed, the ending was abrupt and a little weak. The overall plot wasn’t as tight as Alaska’s or TFIoS’s. BUT–I will say this. It leaves a very important message that I think everyone could relate to, and it can be summed up in a line from the book: “What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.”

When we like someone, it’s easy to put them on a pedestal and treat them like a beautiful mystery that we can never be too happy to figure out. It’s easy to like the unknown. The possibilities are endless, and there is always excitement in discovering the unknown, especially when we find out we are right.

But there is also the great risk of thinking that a person is more than who he/she really is. If we’re not careful, we strip the person of his/her humanity and we’ll be left with only the concept that we’ve built up. We’ll be consumed with our expectations and blinded by the mystery. The biggest tragedy will be the shock from the realization that we are normal and ordinary; that we are neither gods nor mysteries. We’re just people.

Paper Towns is a story about a boy and his journey towards discovering his biggest mystery: Margo Roth Spiegelman.

Elbert Hubbard said, “If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.”

That’s what you will get from reading Looking for Alaska by John Green—among other things, enlightenment from being sad. Acceptance of things you cannot understand. Understanding that you can’t always have answers.

The book promises no happy endings. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t make any promise at all. All it says in the blurb is that nothing is the same after. But there is the hope that you will learn something and be enlightened by it.

You will be sucked into a world of first love and last words; of high school pranks and religious philosophies; of The Great Perhaps and the Labyrinth. It’s both funny and heartbreaking. The characters will be good friends you will laugh and cry with. And there is a great risk you will fall in love with Alaska Young.

And that’s why it’s worth reading. Even though she will break your heart, it is worth reading.

There is this one quote I really love from this movie and I remembered it while I was talking to a good friend this weekend.  The quote reads: “You have to resign yourself to the awkwardness of life.  Only if you find peace within yourself you’ll find true connection with others.”  Aside from how Ethan Hawke looked, this quote I think is what makes this movie very memorable for me; it’s one of my all-time favorites.

Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) met on a train in Europe.  It was not a typical meeting of strangers; it was an  instantaneous connection.  Jesse and Celine explored the beautiful city of Vienna for one night while having interesting conversations about all sorts of things from their mundane lives, to their ideas on long-term relationships, to their hopes and dreams, to their beliefs, to their emotional attraction to each other.  In one of these conversations, Celine told Jesse that if there’s any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something.

I love to watch Jesse and Celine  talk and listen to each other.  They let each other talk for as long as each needs to.  Nobody cuts what one is saying.  While one is talking, you’ll see the other one is not busy judging the other or thinking about what to say next.  You’ll see the spontaneity and candidness  in the reactions.  You see them really connecting, really looking into each others’ eyes and trying to absorb what each is saying and meaning.

I love these kinds of conversations.  These are the kinds of conversations that  fill you up to the brim and make you feel inspired.  I remember a  friend of mine once said this kind conversation is like the work of two distinct souls trying to intertwine through words.  Soulspeak.   When you lose yourself in the sharing yet you feel you are more yourself than in any other ordinary time.   Before Sunrise beautifully captures this magical moment.  I am in love all over again!

Imagine Dragons is a Las Vegas-based indie band who just released their EP. Their songs are all kinds of happy and will make you want to dance today. Their single, It’s Time is the featured song in the Perks of Being a Wallflower trailer.

If you need some happy music today, make sure to listen to Imagine Dragons!

Now don’t let your heart start pumping when you hear the word “musical” if you haven’t watched Once yet. Everything about this indie film goes against what we understand as a musical. There are no testosterone-filled bodies dancing here. No Hollywood stars in flashy costumes lip-syncing to recorded music. No wonderfully choreographed big productions either. Think of Moulin Rouge or Chicago or West Side Story and strip them bare naked. What remains are touching sincerity and beautiful music.

The movie stars real-life musicians Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova and the scenes are shot with cameras far from the actors giving the movie a feel of authenticity. It feels as if we are watching a couple having a lovers’ quarrel and the couple don’t know that we are watching them so they don’t hold back emotions or words. All songs in Once are sung and accompanied live by Hansard and/or Irglova except for that scene when the character of Irglova went out to buy batteries for her CD player and she sort of sings to herself while a recorded instrumental music accompanies her song.

The songs, oh the songs. If you have just been out of a relationship or are deeply in love with someone you can’t have, I suggest you don’t watch this movie. At least, not anytime soon. The songs will tug at your heart and pull your soul down that lonely place from which poets fetch their lonely words. Even if you mute the volume so as not to hear the songs, you won’t escape raw emotions when you watch Hansard sing (even if mute). Hansard sings as if every word that goes out of his mouth is a baby going out of a mother’s womb. It’s not a nice image but you’ll understand when you watch Hansard. There’s so much passion and sincerity you want to hug him every time he sings.

The story doesn’t confuse us with sub-plots and hard-to-remember characters. Basically, it’s the story of a boy who meets a girl. Boy fell in love. Girl liked him back. Boy got inspired and suddenly decided to push his life forward. Girl puts her life on the right track too. And then, I’ll hang it here, no spoiler.

So, as the movie’s tagline says, how often do you find the right person? Once. The person may leave or stay but meeting that person is not coincidental. You meet because the meeting, like the meeting of the cue ball and the colored ball on a billiard table, strikes your life and changes its direction. This is how inspiring this movie is, it makes me want to write about coincidences and life directions.

Anyway, I leave you with the song from this movie. The title of the song is “Falling Slowly“. In my opinion, it has one of the most beautiful words in any song. I hope you watch the movie more than once in your lifetime and be inspired. Be inspired.