The Things We Borrow

I am a pretty average person, live my life in a pretty average way and can generally relate to people pretty well. So when I sat down to think about the borrowed theme for today, in honor of Freedom to Marry week, I realized that the average person borrows a lot each day. This is not a bad thing. We all borrow and we all allow others to borrow. The most common uses of the word borrow are

to take or obtain with the promise to return the same or an equivalent (I would like to borrow your red dress for my hot date tonight. I'll give it back unless it gets ripped off of me and then I'll buy you a new one.)

to use, appropriate, or introduce from another source (I borrowed this definition from dictionary.com)

I borrow things because I like to improve myself everyday. Some people are good writers, or builders, or joke tellers, or cooks, or deep thinkers or sex goddesses, or political genius', or financial wizards, or mothers, or satirists, or drivers. We borrow ideas and learn from other people everyday. Borrowing is good. Some people have a collection of really good books to borrow too, or good clothes, or recipes.

I don't know when, how or why the tradition of borrowing something for one's wedding came to be (and I am not sure I really want to know, probably some crazy man, woman, you are my property now, crap) but we used it at our wedding to honor the person we borrowed it from. Both B and I held hankies from our grandmothers. My everyday borrowing doesn't necessarily honor the person allowing the borrow, but in some ways it does.

Things I have borrowed:

• "Your hand fits my hand" the quote inside B's wedding band


• B's good mood on days when I don't have one


• fashion advice from my new Glamour magazine


• a book from the library


• playfulness from the kittens


• wedding ideas from the knot


• the bathrobe I am now wearing


• ideas from my fellow bloggers


• sentimental feelings from the people I love (turning them into my own)


• this template from blogger


• song tunes

Journal of [the] giving and taking that makes the world go round