Grey's Anatomy 17...

It’s a common belief that positive thinking leads to a happier, healthier life. As children we’re told to smile and be cheerful and put on a happy face. As adults we’re told to look on the brightside, to make lemonade and see glasses as half full. Sometimes, reality can get in the way of our ability to act the happy part, though. Your health can fail, boyfriends can cheat, friends can disappoint. It’s in these moments when you just want to get real, to drop the act, and be your true, scared, unhappy self.

Just when we think we’ve figured things out, the universe throws us a curve ball. So we have to improvise, we find happiness in unexpected places, we find our way back to the things that matter the most. The universe is funny that way, sometimes it just has a way of making sure we wind up exactly where we belong.

Biology says that we are who we are from birth. That our DNA is set in stone. Unchangeable. Our DNA doesn't account for all of us though. Life changes us. We develop new trades. Become less territorial. We stop competing. We learn from our mistakes. We face our greatest fears. For better or worse. We find ways to change our biology. The risk, of course is that we can change too much, to the point we don't recognize ourselves. Finding a way back can be difficult. There is no compass, no map. We just have to close our eyes, take a step and hope to God we'll get there.

Under the cover of darkness, people do things they'd never do under the harsh glare of day. Decisions feel wiser, people feel bolder. But when the sun rises, you have to take responsibility for what you did in the dark and face yourself under the cold, harsh light of day.

Ask most people what they want out of life and the answer is simple – to be happy. Maybe it’s this expectation, though, the wanting to be happy that just keeps us from ever getting there. Maybe the more we try and will ourselves to states of bliss, the more confused we get to the point where we don’t recognize ourselves. Instead, we just keep smiling trying like hell to be the happy people we wish we were until, eventually, it hits us. It’s been there all along. Not in our dreams or hopes, but in the known, the comfortable, the familiar.

People are really romantic about the beginnings of things. Fresh start, clean slate, a world of possibility. But no matter what new adventure you're embarking on, you're still you. You bring you into every new beginning in your life. So how different can it possibly be?

It's all anybody wants, right? Clean slate, a new beginning. Like that's gonna be any easier. Ask the guy pushing the boulder up the hill. Nothing is easy about starting over. Nothing at all.

An hour, one hour, can change everything forever. An hour can save your life. An hour can change your life. Sometimes an hour is a gift we give ourselves. For some, an hour can mean almost nothing. For others, an hour makes all the difference in the world. But in the end, it's still just an hour. One of many. Many more to come. Sixty minutes. Thirty-six hundred seconds. That's it. Then it starts all over again. And who knows what the next hour might hold.

When your life is sucky, you get drunk and sleep with inappropriate men. It’s your thing. Whatever. I find it charming.

I bail. Okay, when things get hard I... I walk away, maybe it's because I grew up an army brat and we moved every 18 months. Maybe I never learned to commit, but I'm here now, and I'm staying because I'm gonna fight to make sure you know that I'm commited to this thing. I'm not perfect but neither are you, and you... you wanna talk about faults? How about not being able to forgive? At some point youre gonna have to forgive me.

When we say things like "people don't change" it drives scientists crazy because change is literally the only constant in all of science. Energy. Matter. It's always changing, morphing, merging, growing, dying. It's the way people try not to change that's unnatural. The way we cling to what things were instead of letting things be what they are. The way we cling to old memories instead of forming new ones. The way we insist on believing despite every scientific indication that anything in this lifetime is permanent. Change is constant. How we experience change that's up to us. It can feel like death or it can feel like a second chance at life. If we open our fingers, loosen our grips, go with it, it can feel like pure adrenaline. Like at any moment we can have another chance at life. Like at any moment, we can be born all over again.

No matter how high the stakes, sooner or later you're just gonna have to go with your gut. And maybe, just maybe, that'll take you right where you were supposed to be.

Every cell in the human body regenerates on average every seven years. Like snakes, in our own way we shed our skin. Biologically we are brand new people. We may look the same, we probably do, the change isn't visible at least in most of us, but we are all changed completely forever.

My lack of interest in seeing you is not a strategy. I'm not playing hard to get. I don't want to see you because I turned my life upside down for you and you walked away because for a week I was cranky. You're untrustworthy, so I don't want to see you. You're self-centered, so I don't want to see you. I am a hundred percent certain that if I let you back in my life again you will hurt me again, so I don't want to see you. This isn't a ploy. I'm not pouting. I don't want you in my life.

And is it worth it? Being responsible? Because if you take your vitamins and pay your taxes, and never cut the line the universe still gives you people to love & lets them slip through your fingers like water. & then what do you got? Vitamins & nothing.

There's a reason I said I'd be happy alone. It wasn't 'cause I thought I'd be happy alone. It was because I thought if I loved someone and then it fell apart, I might not make it. It's easier to be alone. Because what if you learn that you need love and then you don't have it? What if you like it and lean on it? What if you shape your life around it and then it falls apart? Can you even survive that kind of pain? Losing love is like organ damage. It's like dying. The only difference is death ends. This? It could go on forever.

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