Mindy Kaling on friendship

Did you guys watch The Mindy Project this week? I was laughing out loud through the entire episode. If you haven't yet seen it, sneak away from your desk and watch it right now.

New York Magazine wrote a profile on Mindy a while back, and this paragraph has stuck with me: "My relationship with my mom is really the single most profound relationship that I’ve ever had in my life," Mindy tells me...But her voice breaks when she starts talking about how she sat down with a pen and paper and asked her mother to give her all the advice she could possibly give her before she died, and Kaling realized she’d never be able to ask her mother for advice again. “I said to her, ‘Mom, I’m going to be so lonely without you.’” She’s crying now but keeps going. “And she just said, ‘You have to be your own best friend. If you always remember that, you will always have someone there with you.’”

P.S. Did you know that Mindy Kaling's real name is Vera Chokalingam?
P.P.S. Who's secretly in love with Danny Castellano?

Friendship

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, "What! You too? I thought I was the only one." —C.S. Lewis

P.S. Making friends as an adult.

Encouragement

I've been feeling a little overwhelmed this week. Sometimes it's hard being a grown-up, especially an anxious one. But then my mom sent me this poem, and I'd love to frame it on my desk. It speaks so beautifully to the strength we can carry with us.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!
—Rudyard Kipling

How are you feeling these days, my loves?

P.S. Are you, too, a worrier?

(Banner from Secret Holiday & Co.; top illustration by Marc Johns, via Swissmiss)