Why should you trust people

When we are little, those who take care of us make sure to inform us about the perils of trusting strangers. It is, let’s be sure of this, a way to protect us, but also to help us protect ourselves from the things we do not know or could not understand for we lack life experience.

When we grow older, our life experience grows with us. Some become more careful, others surround themselves with high fences, and a small number never learn their lesson, regardless of the many deceits they have experienced – for them, the trust in humanity comes by default.

There is a show that I feel is very interesting made by a French show creator - J’irai dormir chez vous (I want to sleep at your place) – which beautifully presents the status of trust throughout the globe. Besides geographical, cultural and social information that one can learn while watching the show, there is a main focus on this – How much do you trust people? Do you feel you can trust me? Can I sleep at your place?

As a rule, it always seems that the poorest, the ones living in precarious conditions, are more willing to share their space, food and water with the show creator.

I must admit, I see a somewhat excentricity in letting a stranger into your home, a stranger that you have never seen before, who also films you and your home – a reality show, actually. But still... there are some who receive him in their homes in order to spend the night.

I find myself in the first category. But I must add that I do belive that trust must be gained, and I do not hurry to trust anyone, just like that. Namely, I won’t start enchanting strangers I have just met with my beautiful voice. For I believe that in order to see such performances one must have earned them.

Still, sometimes I get to surprise myself with the confidence I invest in situations or people. For example, in 2015, I was living in Russia. It was rather easy for me to learn the Cyrillic alphabet – and this because it was nice to discover that they had a reverse r, like I used to write it when learning the Latin Alphabet- and knew a couple of words to use in case of need. So, back then, I was looking for a job.

On the day I am telling you about, I was on my way for an interview for an English teacher position. I had made notes on a piece of paper regarding the itinerary to follow in order to get to the private school I had applied for. Still, something went wrong and I got lost. I turned left and right, but still could not find myself on the right way. Therefore, even though I had scarce knowledge of the Russian language, I stopped the passersby. People who did not speak English, but who were willing to help me. At a certain point, I arrived near some apartment buildings. I was on the street the school was supposed to be. But still, no sign of it. The metal door (a standard door for Russian apartment buildings) of a twelve-floor apartment building opened and a gentleman came out. I had arrived at my wits’ end and so the despair I was feeling made me ask for his help. I showed him the piece of paper with the names of the street and the school I was looking for. I figured that if he came out of the building he had to know more than me about the surroundings.

The look on his face made me realize I was in the wrong. But he showed me that he will look on his phone. He only made use of a couple of words in Russian, being aware that I could have not understood. Then, he pointed towards his car. He charged his phone in there and introduced the name of the street. It seemed to take forever for the map to load, but then an itinerary appeared on the screen. The gentleman made a gesture for me to enter his car. And I got in. We drived for less than 2 minutes, enough to go around the block and to arrive in front of the school. I thanked him, got out of the car and went inside for the job interview. I only realized after leaving the school that I had willingly put myself in danger. I was a foreigner who hardly spoke the local language; exactly the perfect target. Still, my purpose had paralyzed my fears, making me experience a beautiful feeling. That of having trust in someone and that certain someone did not deceive my trust. It is truly something extraordinary to discover that we are people amongst people and we are capable of helping each other without a hidden purpose or benefit.

Go on, now, I love you

Waiting in line. It still happens.

Yesterday I was waiting for my turn, thinking about thinking, taking small steps towards the counter I was waiting at. 'Go on, now, I love you', a young lady's utterance while ending a phone conversation put a stop to my dreaming. Then, she touched my left shoulder and asked me if everyone there, in the queue, was waiting for the same thing, to pick up their already paid-for products. I confirmed and tried my best to ease her uneasiness for the waiting did not usually last long. Her mobile rang. She answered it and told the person with which she was talking that there is a long line, but a lady told her that it should not last long. She closed the conversation again with 'Go on, now, I love you' that somehow sounded less convincing than the last one she had uttered. After 2 minutes, she dialed up a number and asked something. After receiving the answer, she closed with the same 'Go on, now, I love you'.

Sure, everyone is free to show their feelings, but it worries me that some words start to loose their intensity because they are being trivialized. This 'Go on, now, I love you', cast at the end of a line with a frequency that had nothing to do with the intensity of the feeling, and actually seemed to replace the word 'goodbye', made me sad. 

About us

I am fond of colors. My living years are divided into small periods of the reign of a certain color upon my wardrobe, but also my living space. Now, a small war of domination is fought among yellow, light blue and emerald green. And I am not ashamed by it. It is my relationship with life, and I express it through different colors. Still, I find myself amused by the fact of discovering through my things minimum two items of clothing of the same color. As if I had bought them in order to verify my love for that color or maybe to check upon my attention towards the things I buy.

If one strolls through Bucharest, one might realize that people living here also love colors. Check the embellishments of the fences, the golden gilt to the mane of grey lions, the roofs, the form and the writing on the mail boxes, the entrance mats, the sound of the doorbell  and so on and so forth. Bucharest is a varicolored city. We have banners almost everywhere, and the shops mesmerize us with offers and intriguing slogans.

While passing in front of an open market, one realizes that the hum of the people there does also belong to the coloring of the city. Accents, dialects, archaisms, they all fly over them like those colored powders they cast to the sky during the summer at the seaside in order to create a colorful rainbow-like memory. One slows down one’s pace and enjoys such diversity. One looks at the faces of the people. Some of them are truly happy to talk, to share, to listen, and to get the chance to speak once more. It is true what they say about going to the market; that is not all about shopping, but about socializing, about showing signs of life, of living experiences and sharing them with the others.

Yesterday, I was passing by such a scenery, enjoying the color palette when from the window of a shop a simple piece of paper, in A4 format, written in blue ink caught my attention: ‘We have oilcloth!’. It was inviting one to enter the shop, to request it and thus have different colors that could mix with the ones one already has inside oneself and inside one’s house.

From time to time, I am questioned about us. The pause that I make before answering the questions appears not because of not knowing what to say, but by trying to understand what type of answer is the one asking really looks forward to. About us, about Romanians, there is a lot to tell. But one thing is for sure. We love colors. Some of them we manage to mix in an aesthetic manner, but others not so much. And this happens because, somehow, aesthetics does not come first on our requests. The importance is carried by the color and its message.

If you were a penguin

Ideas come and go. We can choose whether to keep them or to let them go and conquer the world.

People say that there are no longer new ideas. That everything has been already told and retold. But I am sure of one thing, each idea has corners. Some of them even have corners to their corners. Well, I believe that this is how creativity appears (whether you see it in clothes, books, movies, buildings to live in or work in and even in ice cream cones).

The ones that manage to see the corners I was referring to above are what I call creative people. Their role is not at all simple. They are the ones who are able to show other dimensions to things, and to present them so as it is easy for us to understand. Huh, thing of the things you might have passed by if there was not for a creative to show you another meaning to them?!

I am curious and I like the feeling I get when I discover meanings or messages in different artistic creations. For example, I like to paint. Every time I did that, I managed to put an end to my acrylic adventures without endangering the integrity of the walls to my room. But my paintings are surely not as beautiful as the ones painted by Kandinsky, one of my favorite abstract painters.

Still, that does not mean that I have thrown away everything I had painted. Some of them are so exquisite in their naivety that I had to keep them. And I am proud of having painted them. One is even proudly displayed in the hall of my apartment. So that the people visiting me have an idea in what kind of house they enter. I managed to get to that point in painting, and I the fact that I have tested my talent makes me very happy with the result. Moreover, I am not at all discouraged by the fact that in this whole world there are creative people whose arts cannot be rivaled. We can live one with the others, and I am really sure we can inspire each other.

I have spent these days in the cold. No, nobody locked me inside a refrigerator and neither did those spending the time with me put on the air conditioner (even though my skilled voice could cool them or warm them, according to the season. Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you that I have a wonderful voice. I keep putting off going to a singing course for fear that I would plant the seeds of envy in other participants’ hearts. But I sing daily and I never miss a chance to show off my talent. I also have fans. Yes, I have. I am sure I have. Well, I must have. I receive so many encouragements not to have any. It’s just that the encouragements are not made out loud. For you know, I also have the gift of reading the minds.).

So, as I was writing, the other days were spent in the cold, accompanied by a book with a penguin, Micha, as one of the main characters, living in his owner’s apartment, Victor. In English, the book is called ‘Death and the Penguin’ and is a beautiful combination of self-irony and the quest for the truth.

Well, it is something adorable in the shuffle of the penguin’s feet which makes one think of one’s priorities. Is it that you have adequately set them?! Is it not that you have hurried to take the others as example for your own priorities?! Are there any priorities that you have never even thought about and which could be important?!

It is said that animals have a simple way of living, following their basic needs. I happen to remember this saying anytime I am upset or stressed out, and realize that the reasons that make me that way are not that important. And thus I verify the fact that it is far easier to exaggerate. So let’s make it all simpler.

If I were a penguin:

-          I would see the time as a balm. I would let it flow over me, without making a fuss or complaining about the fact that it is slipping away. Actually, I would be totally ignorant regarding it for I could not know how to measure it, and thus it’s passing by would not influence me.

-          I would be happy to take step after step. Every step I took would be marked by the joy of walking. The plain or bumpy terrain would not cause me any displeasure.

-          I would not treat the food as a source of worry or presentation. For I would be not preoccupied with getting fat or getting the best picture of the food I put in my mouth.

-          I would not worry that I hurt someone’s feelings if I said no to something I did not want to eat or do.

And you, what would you do if you were a penguin?