Everything I know is wrong

One year ago I started a mock experiment – the experiment of being stupid. What I did during the experiment was trying to prove that using less of your brain capacity to think about stuff that seemed unimportant could translate into a happier life. Practice proved me wrong. It is not the thinking that kills us, not even the “unimportant” stuff we are trying to process. Using less than you actual mind capacity does not function either.

While experimenting for a way into a happier life, one that required less thinking and more perceiving, there were some happenings around me that were of definite help. Some will still take time to refine, some could immediately be translated into actions. All in all, the one thing that made me richer this year was that I learned to laugh heartily – at both life and myself. This was the one good side effect of being stupid – you cease taking yourself ever so seriously and start weighing the pleasures of life through other lenses. You start considering your life from the perspective of its impact in other’s people lives. Not necessarily the tags they attach for you inside their heads, but what you mean to them, how you can be of help to them. You start seeing the beauty of nature around, start being interested in the recipe of the cake you are eating at the business meeting, really enjoy the taste of the morning coffee and stop taking it for granted. You start developing others instead of just yourself and start laughing when you see others handling situations with the self-importance you once attributed to yourself. You start seeing the context rather than the individual pieces of the puzzle and you stop obsessing about what you cannot change.

In spite of all these benefits, my basis for considering the experiment a failure is that all this does not necessarily relate to thinking. Quitting thinking was not what led me to those insights, as a negative action does not translate into a positive one. It was probably love that did the trick. Unconditional, constant, foolish and vulnerable love, one that came in unnanounced, unawaited for, while the barriers of too much thinking and analysing were lowered.

The topic is complex and still needs expanding, and over the next posts I will try to write more about it. It’s just such a relief to know that I can finally continue the thinking where I left off, armed with a more powerful weapon than ever before.

And the hardest part
Was letting go not taking part
You really broke my heart
And I tried to sing
But I couldn't think of anything
And that was the hardest part

I could feel it go down
You left the sweetest taste in my mouth
You're a silver lining the clouds
(Coldplay, The Hardest Part)

The Theory about The One

You know about the One, I bet on it. He was your best-in-class colleague, envied by all. The little girl with a mysterious smile living next door you wish you’d said Hello to at least once. The Alice who has moved out, your first love, the guy you are into right now, the boy you never could tell you liked, that beauty you kissed on the lips once, in a club, and never met afterwards. That childhood friend who died, your one-night office romance, that brunette in whom you found your match, your chess teacher, a remote relative.

The One is that singular person you feel from the very beginning will play a special role for you. The role of a mentor, of a life’s possibility, of a new path. In time, he or she gradually elates into a product of your projection onto them. They are the kindest, the smartest, the best and most unique you’ve ever met or will again. Their gestures seem, at times, to point the way. You memorize them like an anthem you sing in your own temple for them. Sometimes it does materialize into something real. At times, it doesn’t. For the weak, this means months of pointless wandering, comparing, maybe daydreaming, it is an endless search for what they prevent from ever matching by setting the barrier of perfection. The strong ones just sever it all. Bring all thoughts to an end – quit the “One” just like they would cigarettes, by replacing it with something else. Boast on moving on. Neither ever forget.

You see, I know you. I’ve heard about your story from the others, or maybe you have told me all about your One who makes you smile, whom you once lost, whom you’ve just met, married or are still dreaming of. Just… allow yourself the benefit of reasonable doubt before melting into your imagination. It might save you from yourself.

We say these words again and again
But they still sound the same
It was in your eyes, in your eyes
They were just easy lies

The lightest words are heavy
And promises are easy
And no one's ever happy or sad for very long
But just because I said it
It doesn't mean I meant it
I guess that was the way all along
(Keane, Again&Again)

Autumn day

Herbsttag
Rainer Maria Rilke

Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß.
Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren,
und auf den Fluren laß die Winde los.
Befiel den letzten Früchten voll zu sein;
gib ihnen noch zwei südlichere Tage,
dränge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage
die letzte Süße in den schweren Wein.

Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.
Wer jetzt allein ist, wird Es lange bleiben,
wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben
und wird in den Alleen hin und her
unruhig wandern, wenn die Blätter treiben.

Best to keep quiet, when the leaves are falling in the alleys. In order to hear something else than your own thoughts.

What I call elegance

"Do you want some coffee?" he asked politely, while pouring some in a cup. "Yes, please" I said, and added, "would you like some milk". (I was closer to the milk.) "Thank you, I like my coffee black", he answered, and handed me the cup he had just filled, elegantly, filling up another cup.

Feels like home :-)

The Prodigal Daughter

7 years into my departure from my hometown and another 4-and-something into my consulting continuum, I have returned home. Though I have been in Sibiu at some point or another over the years for holidays, now it will be different. Working from home and going to the office in my town already feels strange. It is a matter of professionalism to deliver the same value to the client, as if it were in any other city in the world. However, working from the desk I used as a high school student and maybe seeing my old friends in the evening has a perfume of a long-awaited rendez-vous.

Given that I will be mainly involved in work, please follow the Twitter updates on the right-hand side – it might be that they will give you more insight, since I will not be able to write on a constant basis.

Cheers!

Take some distance

People can be very cruel to one another, due to their own sensibility. Cruel to be kind, one might say. In response to an unpleasant situation, or words that may seem hurting, they withdraw deep into their shells, just to think about it, without realising that this "thinking" and the following silence might do more harm than good.

The silences I know are of different kinds - the kind that rebuilds you, and lets you appear more shining than ever in front of everyone, prepared to face life's vicisitudes and more, even dare life to give you more, without being afraid; the kind that lets you see through friends and foes, and recognize the good that comes with the bad, and maybe put an end to the latter; the silence that is empty, the one that bears creation, the emotional silence, the one that watches movies, the one that stares at the walls, the silence of being hurt, and the one that precedes words of wisdom. There is one particular form of silence though, that also exists in the bravest of us, although reason may concede otherwise - it is the silence of cowardice. When you are afraid of what might come out of your thinking, of what you have done - or didn't do, and of the reactions (of silence) that you might trigger. And the longer you avoid it, the more painful are the words roll from your lips. Because at some point, the risk is to encounter - not anger, not despair, but sheer indifference.

Just tell me what you've got to say to me
I've been waiting for so long to hear the truth
It comes as no surprise at all you see
So cut the crap and tell me that we're through
(White Town, I Could Never Be Your Woman)

Video about a guy and his dog

Nee, my heart doesn't feel so bad at all, it's just that I liked the video so much. I wonder how much negotiation it will take with my mother to get myself a dog :)

The devil is in the details

Someone told me tonight that all our trials are given to us by the devil. That the guy has nothing else better to do than to mix in the lives of people and make them unhappy. And that God has currently higher work to do than to help us handle it, but that He trusts us. I said I believe in a mass of good energy floating around and occasionally changing focus and influence. She looked at me in disbelief, but I appreciated her expressing neither contempt nor admiration. She took it just as if I had said a few words about the weather, so I felt confident to further expand, and say that since all this energy is good, and it resides in all of us, then we must all be good.

In the silence that followed, the only thought I could hang on to was that maybe now all the good energy is with me, and if I send some in your direction, then you will understand me behind all words and come back.

Moby - Slipping away

Evolution

“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he'd learned in seven years.”

(Mark Twain)

I must say I'm also very pleasantly surprised with my parents lately. They must have learned a lot! :)

Close, no matter how far

“Living might mean taking chances but they're worth taking, Loving might be a mistake but it's worth making.” (Leanne Womack)

People worry about other people and help one another while they are close. I mean, it's normal, the others are our friends and after all it's in our own little egoistic interest that the ones around us are happy. It also makes us happy and contributes to the overall well-being of the Universe. Only to name a few of the benefits.

But... what do you do with people who need you, but are away? In what way can you help them? There are relationships which stay remarkably close, in spite of the distance. People telling you about things that happened in their lives and made them sad, and you really picking up on what they are saying and feeling for them. Making plans to go see them and be close to them and sustain them with good humor and optimism in their endeavor to get past unpleasant situations. I can remember a conversation with my mum, a long time ago. She was sick and I was several hundred kilometers away and I told her how sorry I was could do nothing for her. Whereas she said "Yes you can. Just talk to me, keep my spirits up, and then you'll come home and everything will be alright". Which I did, eventually, still feeling odd about not being able to get a pair of magical gloves and help her from the distance.

Anyway, some recent events have led me to believe that being close to somebody is less a question of distance than a question of will. You can be away from somebody and still care for her and do little things that you know would make her happy (such as sending a CD with your favourite music - or hers, for that matter). Or you can be far and say to yourself anything you might do would be in vain anyway, because physical distance also separates the souls. From my own experience, this is the most hurtful thing you can do to somebody reaching out for you. It is little things that act as magical gloves and keep friends close at a distance, without leaving them alone facing life's asperities: a lunch together from time to time, a few moments on the telephone, meeting in some place in the middle of the distance, a postcard saying nothing more than "Hey, I thought of you enough to send you these few lines"... Things that keep people warm at heart. Things that may seem pathetic for some, but which do make a difference.

If I stand all alone, will the shadow hide the color of my heart;
blue for the tears, black for the night's fears.
The star in the sky don't mean nothin' to you, they're a mirror.
I don't want to talk about it, how you broke my heart.
(Rod Stewart, I Don't Wanna Talk About It)

Let us go then, you and I...

This is one of my favourite poems ever... at some point I knew almost all of it by heart.

Thought I'd share :)

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

(T S Eliot, Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock)

Do the things you don't want to

I hate doing things I don't want to do. You know, the ones that make you find all kinds of excuses for not doing. Relating to either school or work or friendships or whatever. First you start by setting them up in the calendar, on your to-do list or even on a sheet of paper which you pin over the kitchen table or the entrance door and mark red, so you can permanently see it and get reminded of what you should be doing. Then you start postponing. It was not so important for today, so we can do it tomorrow. Or the day after tomorrow. Oh, look! I got another task, and this one is far more important (like watching an episode of my favourite series). Or damn! there is a fly in the room. And so I spend another half an hour hunting it down. Then you blog about it. Or chat with friends. Or do some groundbreaking research about the Zerg market. And that really important thing you ought to be doing, but don't, gets shoved under the rug.

One sweet day you find how much had depended on doing that small thing, and you are either sorry and that's it, or you are doing something to tie the ends together. The resulting feeling is, in most cases, that of relief that it is finally done. Apart from this, there is no benefit. So if you can hear me - and I know most of you can - don't procrastinate. Procrastination really is the best way to miss out on important moments in your life, and it's a pity. There is so much beauty left to discover.

I think I'm drowning
Asphyxiated
I wanna break this spell
That you've created
(Muse, Time is Running Out)

Between the pain and the pleasure

I feel like I’m leaving
Like I’m leaving home
Like the clouds are parting, and I’m not alone
(Beth Hart, Learning to Live)

Snapshots of my Dalloway-ism

Tonight I put some order in my stuff and found an old notebook from my university years. There are two fragments below from Woolf's 'Mrs Dalloway', which I remember having read many times over, because I found it so enthralling.

"What is this terror? What is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement? It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was."

"He had not said 'I love you'; but he held her hand, Happiness is this, is this, he thought."

I feel like I have lived them out myself :)

Eureka!

Ladies and gents, and all other kind people randomly reading this blog – the truth is out in the open now and resistance is futile: Men cannot read your mind. Period. They can’t! Among their several other great qualities, this one does not stand out. Hell, it’s not even on the list! Be it your dad, your boyfriend, brother, colleague, friend etc – they can’t read thoughts, much less act on the thoughts they should have read and interpreted and thus get brilliant ideas of how to get you (or themselves) out of trouble.

Bob had actually tried to tell me this at some point, and I laughed myself dead at the tone she used, but she was so right. Of course, this epochal breakthrough will not make anybody’s life any big lot easier – or harder, for that matter, the knowledge of it might however help in understanding some happenings. Until recently, I was very pissed with my dad, as he was visiting me at the time my illness had begun – and although he could have, he didn’t drive me to the doctor when I had my appointment. When we talked about this later, he said he’d always been so convinced I can handle most things on my own, that he thought he’d also let me handle this one. As it turned out later, the little cold was more than it seemed, and that is when he apologised and asked me to tell him next time when I need help -- literally. (As in: "Dad, I need you to drive me to the doctor's at 4 PM today".)

Coming back to the topic of the post: if you feel like somebody in your life doesn’t get the message (happens mostly to men, but it can also hit women) – then he or she really didn’t. You need to find a way to communicate it directly to them, instead of sitting home by yourself, making scenarios and killing off precious little gray cells.

Have you found wisdom yet?

There is often more wisdom to be found at the edges of life than in its middle. A life-threatening illness, for instance, may shuffle our values like a deck of cards. Sometimes a card that has been on the bottom of the deck for most of our lives turns out to be the top card, the thing that really matters. Having watched people sort their cards and play their hands in the presence of death for many years, I would say that most often the top card is love.

From an email sent a long time ago to some friends. Source unknown.

I strongly suspect Bob of getting close to some of that wisdom :)