Deep Roots are Not Reached by the Frost

Tonight I found my old journal entries from 1999-2005 that I typed up for a Personal Progress project in High School. In the beginning the entries were quite hilarious. My childish mind spoke through the misspellings and naive words. Morgan and I had a good laugh. As time progressed, the entries got sparse, but longer. As I read, I noticed some patterns in what I wrote about. The first was friendship. A huge majority of my entries dealt with what my friends were doing, how I felt about them, how I interacted with them, what I didn't like about them, and how I wished I had different friends. There were large time gaps in my entries at times, unfortunately, but I still got the gist of what I felt. Reading over my words, I can see a theme in my life now that has definitely been shaped by my childhood experiences. I value strong friendship GREATLY. It's a very sensitive area for me. Genuine care and concern mean so much to me because of my experiences as a child. I can ...

Today I was walking home from class with a good bit on my mind. Generally I have my head down and I look at the ground while I think but today I was looking around. I'm sure glad I was! As I looked up, I saw a guy walking in my general direction with the biggest smile on his face. I didn't think much of it. Generally there's a plethora of people smiling as they walk across campus. However, those walking people don't generally continue to smile in the same way as they make eye contact with strangers. This guy was very different in that manner. We made eye contact and his smile did not falter in anyway. Pure joy and happiness emitted from his face. As I was understanding this, my pride would not let me return the smile. . . until I was past him. The moment he could no longer see my face a smile broke out across it and I laughed the entire way back to my apartment. After I realized my pride had stopped me from smiling, I laughed at myself for that silly notion, ...