Love advice

An older lady asks a little girl, who is together with her mom and sister, when had she fallen in love for the first time. The girl is around 10 years old and looks at the lady obviously understanding what she was asked. Her lips slightly move, and she turns to look at her mother. Suddenly, she turns her head back to the lady, completely transformed, and shrugs her shoulders without saying anything.

The lady goes on – ”I fell in love for the first time when I was six, it was with a boy from kindergarten. I think, at your age, you have already fallen in love for the first time. And it’s ok if you don’t want to tell. But it’s beautiful to fall in love!”

Silence.

Mom, serious, cold and slightly raising her chin, utters without looking at the girl or the lady – “keep this in mind: you do not fall in love, they fall in love with you!”

Sparklers

It’s summer and it is indeed very hot.

But this did not stop me from lighting a sparkler. Yes, I know, the Christmas tree is not adorned. I put it away in its box sometime at the end of March. I never seem to find the strength to do this immediately after the winter holidays.

I lit a sparkler. Because I wanted to and because there’s nothing wrong with offering yourself a reason to be joyful. Even if that joy seems a little eccentric. 

Let's rejoice!

To ponder on

Every problem contains its own solution.

I did not make up this phrase. It's from a character from the series 'The Wonder Years'.

Nature. No comments

 

Irish Philosophy

 

Thank God for Art!

Last evening, I went to see Ada Milea in concert within the Undercloud festival.

If you haven't yet seen Ada Milea, Bobo Burlăcianu, Anca Hanu and Cristi Rigman performing, then this is a recommendation to do so.

 

Their joyful spirit is so powerful that one feels on the stage with them and one dances and sings and laughs and sighs and then laughs some more.

When the show ended, I left there with a profound feeling of peace and wellbeing. Long live the art!

A Healthy Approach

I feel at home while at work - for some time now this saying has been going around in circles and I am pretty sure I am neither the first one or the only one that wants to condemn it.

This is wrong on so many levels that I fear I may not be the adequate person to explain why. But still I am going to try.

1. If one wants to be healthy (physically and psychologically) one must learn to put barriers between one’s professional life and personal life.

Yes, you may tell me that it is easy for me to make such an utterance since I am not running my own company or I am not a manager and I have no great responsibilities. But if we choose to see beyond the job title, we will understand that any job can be stressful, that it is tiresome and that all people carry their own struggles in order to try and do what they know best and as best as they possibly can.

To put a barrier between personal and professional lives should not be blamed. Even though I remember from my experience, and I also know that colleagues and managers exist (and will continue to exist) that only see when you arrive at work and when you leave, and the rest does not matter. If one remains after hours, it sends the message that one is responsible and dedicated to the company they work for. Sure, emergencies should be honored, but there is responsibility in all parties involved and a clear distinction should be made regarding how an emergency can be recognized.

Aside from this, people should be encouraged to take their necessary time (also stipulated by the law) in order to disconnect (I strongly recommend disconnecting from screens – big and small ones) and to spend their free time in order to recharge. I remember someone who once said that only those that have kids were entitled to not remain after hours, and the rest had no excuse (even if they had finished all the tasks for the day or they had started the work program earlier than the team).

And another thing, the brain doesn’t automatically disconnect when one has ended one’s working day. It takes time and exercise to train your brain to disconnect. And even if one has managed doing that, the brain still works even though you are not doing your tasks anymore. This is why, if you’re like me, you find yourself running in the evening, or late at night or early in the morning trying to scribble down notes about tasks.

2. One cannot put the equal sign between family and work.

Mom never paid you. Well, ok, she might have done this when you helped her with some chores around the house and she wanted to teach you the lesson about the money value. Nevertheless, there is no equal sign between family and work. If such sign exists then it is clearly a dysfunctional relationship.

Sure, one can be lucky enough to have colleagues that remain friends after many years (I myself was this lucky to have colleagues that remained in my circle of friends after time and jobs). But this is far from being the rule. When one searches for a job, one does not search for someone with whom to go get pizza or play a game of squash. No, one searches for a job that puts one’s abilities to good use, and have chances of learning new things and having work relations that makes one feel like they are evolving.

Far be it from me that this should be interpreted as me having a mercantile point of view – meaning, I give only what you give me in return. But I do reckon that some manners of expressing ourselves should be reconsidered (and not only when it comes to work), together with how we relate to us, our professional and personal lives.

How can one check if one has a healthy barrier between personal and professional lives? To ask the question about how present one feels in the current moment.

 

I do consider that it is important that we understand how we position ourselves, what we search for in a job and what we want from ourselves and for ourselves in order to live healthy (and I use not the word health in order to instigate to eating vegetables and fruits, but I do believe it is just as important to have a healthy and realistic approach when it comes to how we think about ourselves as working people).

The Tree, by Emilia Muller

I wrote the text below following a spur. It came just about right since I had noticed, yet again, that my nephew is growing up and I was lost among thoughts and memories. Any spur to write is a good one. If you were searching for one, you have found it.

The Tree

People say that experiences have no physical body. But maybe they have spirit.

I never knew melancholy until I became a father. In the first years of my boy growing up, I lived my life at the limits of fatigue and fear. When one is on their own, there aren’t many things to be needed, but when one becomes responsible for somebody else’s existence (especially when they can care for themselves), one’s body becomes a vessel for a strange type of tree that has its roots in your stomach, and the rest of the branches have spread all around one’s body, from toes to pate. And thus one learns that what one believed about fear was wrong and gets new perspectives on it. Moreover, all fears up until that moment seem to have gathered into only one – that of knowing your child is in danger. And so one starts to feel one with the fear because it is within yourself and circulates very fast from one side to another, in your body, through the branches that vibrate, and the roots (your stomach, that is) clench as if only by becoming smaller it can ensure its existence.

When my boy started going to school, I was so proud I could not fit my skin; literarily, I would feel the branches extending and the roots growing, like a dough. Time went by so quickly that, in retrospective, I realized I did not make the most of it of the moments when my boy was an infant or when I heard him speak for the first time. Or of the moment I heard him calling me dad for the first time. You know who you are and you also know that your child knows who you are, but when you hear it coming out of its mouth for the first time, it’s like up until then your ears have been clogged, and that voice not only unclogged them, but it also made you live a kind of music that speaking could not have generated. One is lost in helping with homework, or solving small dilemmas, taking or picking the child up, and one does not realize that all starts moving too fast, like a big stone tumbling down from a cliff. And one keeps moving, unaware, surprised by the things the child learns or does.

When he started going to high school, I already know I was suffering from melancholy. I would watch him every day and every evening and I always found him different than how he was in the morning. Often, I tried not to look too close for fear of admitting that what I was doing was to search for traces of when he was a baby. Other times, I had the sensation that he was changing more than twice a day, and his voice suffering constant changes would support this. The tree inside of me was smaller now, not much, but enough to provide him with the space he needed in order for adolescence to carry on uninterrupted and so that I won’t suffocate him with reproaches or lessons for which his ears were not yet ready to receive.

I was so glad when my boy became a student. Life had put a great gown on for him, putting on display the wonders that one can reach once one becomes an adult. Anyone, at his age, would have been charmed, and life played a beautiful role in luring him, just like the Sirens used to do with their magic songs, luring sailors. Life had become this siren chanting an irresistible song. Even though this song is a different kind of song, with no melody or obscure purpose. This is just life; this inevitable movement going forward without ever getting the possibility to go back. Now, I saw my boy rarely than before, and every time he would come visit me, my branches would expand and, after his leaving, they would come back to their original size. I was marked by the aching absence of him and the passing of the cruel time. This is how it is supposed to be, my father once told me; young are to grow and the old are to get older. Late in life does one discover that one has already made peace with it, that anyway one cannot withstand this and one cannot stop the passing of time. I would often spend time dreaming about the past. One learns this lesson very fast, especially when it hurts to see that what you once lived cannot happen again. And the smallest thing can throw you right in the middle of a sandstorm from which one learns to get out in one piece only after a couple of trials. A brand of sweets or clothing, a word you know your child used to mispronounce when they were small, a picture, a former teacher, friend, or colleague, almost anything can make you sick with melancholy. This melancholy that is sweet and addictive but is also dangerous because it gives one the feeling that one is entitled to trying to relive those moments, when in fact all one should do is to remain present, to create new beautiful moments that can turn into memories to relive when the longing gets tougher. And only this, to relive.

For parents, when their children move out of their house, life does not seem to wear such a beautiful gown, and it seems less enchanting than for those that have just started their journey. It’s like trying to recoil a ball of wool that is almost all loose. One tries one’s best to get it in the initial form, one pulls and pulls at the thread, but the ball never gets back to its initial form. Some are stubborn and try and remake it a couple of times, and with every try they pull at the thread harder and harder, believing that they will succeed; others stop after the first try or the first tries, bitterly feeling the injustice of this, but being aware that they cannot do more and finding comfort in the fact that at least they tried.

On the day of my son’s wedding, it was the first time I felt my face changing into a mask. I was happy, oh, I was indeed very happy, how can one not?! But the branches from the left part of my body were so cramped as if they were trying to protect my heart from some kind of danger. No one tells one that the most difficult part of being a parent is to find out that one is no longer useful or enough. My boy no longer needed me; well, he no longer needed me like he used to when he was a child. But I can help but wonder, do children ever grow up in their parents’ eyes?! When one is a child, one wants, even needs that one’s parents see one as an adult. I know, for example, that I have always wanted my dad to see me as an adult, that I was capable of taking good care of myself and of others. Only now do I understand that this is a concept difficult to grasp. It had no relation to me whatsoever, but with him, my father. Watching my boy next to his lover, I was living a strange feeling, like he was two people at the same time. This tall man, with a very confident smile on his face was moved by what was happening, and was accompanied, on his left, by the young boy he used to be. My young boy! Oh, when we spoke to other people about children, we talk about them as if we own them, which is actually the only thing that does not change throughout the years. Regardless of what happens with one, this is what soothes the longing and gives one powers to carry on. My little boy was still there, and in my father-like mind I was hearing the adult making the necessary presentations of the people present at the wedding, but I was hearing the little boy instead, asking me for painaches (that’s how he called pancakes when he was little).

I wondered if the parents of the girl felt the same, finding in the lovely woman in front of them the little girl they once knew?! I didn’t find courage to ask. Some things are meant to remain a mystery. It is better to not know it all. Answers can hurt or disappoint. And there’s enough of disappointment in this world to create some more.

 

Today, I no longer have roots. Nor branches. I am one with nature and I believe I have become a spirit. But my boy... my boy has now roots, on his own, and those branches grow beautifully!

Mariana Trench – Jasmin Schreiber

This is not an easy read. But the talent of the writer (and that of the translator) makes one keep reading and going further. Actually, one pierces through those 11,000 metres as if they are not dark, devoid of air or monsters (imaginary or not), out of which the most feared is the monster of blaming oneself.

Life goes on. It is maybe one of the most hideous acknowledgement of somene who has lost a dear one. And no one can come with recommendations when it comes to what should one do. One knows best for oneself; and if not, one will find their own way. Tolerance and goodwill are the only ones we need. In any situation!