3 for girls

One of my favorite blogs that I've found since I suddenly and unexpectedly became a blogger is Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project. After all, I originally began writing because I was inspired to try to create more joy in my own life, so how could I not love Gretchen's blog that she created in order to "recount some of [her] adventures and insights as [she] grapple[s] with the challenge of being happier?" If you haven't yet watched her One Minute Movie, The Years Are Short, then you really must see it. Chances are, it will make you want to create more happiness in your own life.

Speaking of joy, a few of my devoted readers have asked about the title of my blog, 3 for girls. Some of you probably knew immediately that it came from a Counting Crows song, A Murder of One. The lyrics of the song include the lines "You don't wanna waste your life" and "Change, change, change." This song was running through my head the night that I stayed up until 2:30am reading Stephanie Nielson's blog (as I read about the joy she found in motherhood, and the tragedy that befell her on August 16th when she and her husband were in a small airplane crash). And so, contemplating the creation of a blog with the idea of trying to create more joy in my own life, I thought of this song, my three daughters, and these lyrics:

"Well, I dreamt I saw you walkin'
Up a hillside in the sun
Casting shadows on the winter sky
As you stood there counting crows
One for sorrow, two for joy
three for girls, and four for boys
five for silver, six for gold
seven for the secret never to be told."

Wikipedia states that these lines are actually from a divination rhyme that Adam Duritz (the lead singer and founding member of the Counting Crows) heard in the film Signs of Life, and adds, "In the poem, the act of counting crows is particularly useless. Duritz reveals that a name is just a name, and, with that, is useless and can be anything."

I'm glad that he feels that a name "can be anything," because, in my mind, on the night that I signed onto Blogger for the first time, 3 for girls became more about counting joy than counting crows. My search for joy is as much, if not more, for my daughters than for me.

Today I happened upon the quote, "Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys," by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and the story of my "useless" blog name came full circle.

Let us all remember to count our joys. If not today, then when?

[3 Crows in Flight by Paul Roberts Bryan.]