school of love

This past year has been for me a school of love. One would wish that all the lessons would be of the type "and then they lived happily ever after", but even when they are not, there is so much to be learned.

For instance, I have come to realize that just as beauty is said to be in the eye of the beholder, love also can reside in the one loving rather than in the object of that love. We love people/things we think are lovable. And, surprisingly, we continue to do so, even when we know that the person/thing in itself is not necessarily good to/for us. For example chocolate: after so many of us are more or less overweight, why do we not forsake this love, and shift it by starting to love carrots the same way? Let alone people...

I found that love is also a habit: once learned, it is almost impossible to unlearn, a bit like riding a bicycle. Granted, we will not all do a tour de France of love, but once you have learned to keep the thing going, you can do it even in the most diverse circumstances, almost as if by an instinct.

What I've learned though that this is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes the kind of loving I do, or what I think is love showed towards me, might not be that at all, but just because I'm so used to doing it that way, I cease to question its nature. Back to bicycle riding, when my kids were small, I had a hard time concinving them that they could actually ride their bikes even without me holding on or without the training wheels attached to the bike itself. This past year I have started to unlearn the to me self-evident ways of loving and being loved.

I now have a whole new world of love lying ahead of me: so much to unlearn and so much to learn...

pure awesomeness

Last night at the end of our cartoon marathon we watched Kung Fu Panda, a Dreamworks animation movie. There was one phrase that caught my attention, "pure awesomeness".

That got me thinking... maybe that is what we all are (or at least I am) trying to catch with our frantic Christmas preparations and gift-hunting... I can still remember some moments of pure awesomeness from my childhood Christmases and birthdays. There have been other moments too when all of a sudden all of the Universe seems for a moment to have lined up just to make me happy.

As I was reflecting on this, it seems to be like the horizon, you can always go towards it, but you never really get there, because it moves as you move... the perfect moment, the fullness of joy is so fleeting, and we would like to have more, so much more!

Maybe, just maybe, these vanishing moments of pure awesomeness are a signpost, but where are they pointing? And how will I read them?

One thing is sure, to try to hold on to them is like trying stop stars from falling, rivers from flowing, snow from melting in the spring. These moments come with the tag firmly attached to them saying, "this too will pass".

Many realities

I recently visited a place which seems to defy the quest to understand what is going on. The complexities of positions, the lack of shared narratives means that what really is going on is almost beyond capturing.
For a researcher that is very frustrating. But for a human being it brings me right back to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's quote:

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret;
it is only with the heart that one can see rightly,
what is essential is invisible to the eye.
What I saw was often invisible to the eye, but it was shouting louder than any words ever could when listened to with one's heart: I saw mistrust, hope, readiness to try again, sadness and grief, perseverance and courage.
Of course I was as much the observer as the one being observed, and therefore also found myself to be the object of prejudice - a sobering experience!
I hope these lessons will stay with me the next days when I'm faced with more personal aspects of how realities are constructed... beauty and ugliness so often are found in the eye of the beholder!

Disappoinments

Yesterday I listened to a lecture about disappointments. The thing that most stuck with me is that disappointments help you to map the borders of who you are, of what is important to you, what you hope/wish/want.

So embedeed in the incredible losses are these gems of finding out what truly matters.

It is like finding treasures in darkness... coming out from the black pit with jewels filling your hands...

My jewels are many, and they are ablaze with coloured light; the warm deep red glow of friendship, the bright yellow of surprises, the cool blue of silent compassion, the bright green of renewed hope, the soft gray of shared tears, the transparent turquoise speaking of change; all of these set in gold forged in the fires of disappointment, grief and trials.

Some things come with a high price, and some victories are won at great cost, and there will be lasting scars, and maybe I will limp, but like an old Anglo-Saxon poems states, there are things one needs to hold on regardless of one's strength

"Mind must be firmer, heart the more fierce, courage the greater, as our strength diminishes."
"Hige° sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen° lytlað.

Contrary to the heroes slain at the battle of Maldon, I think I'm getting stronger now and am nearer to the dawn, but still, I will search till I find the jewels this present darkness hides and consider myself rich :)

An antidote to Murphy's law

I love the confidence of this poem. I found it pinned atop my desk, and it is such a timely thing!

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

by Sheenagh Pugh

New Beginnings

It is strange of how small things new beginnings really consist of.

This morning I bought myself a new mug to celebrate the fact that I now have a new place to drink my tea/coffee while I sit and write, and as I sat down for the first time in front of my new desk, I found a welcome note written by the previous occupant of this space... and I was given new keys...

in themselves such small things, but yet they mark the very real new beginning!

I wonder why I like newness so much. I'e always liked things that grow, or are in their early stages (babies, trees, plants, cross stich designs, spices), maybe it is because I like the possibilities embedded in them, the "not-yetness" embedded in something that has just begun.

I think I buy spices for much the same reason: who knows what wonderful meals these spices will contribute to... and I love listening to small children: who knows what the world is like through their eyes... and I love watch plants grow, and relationships unfold...

So, here's to new beginnings!

Here and now: remember

You know these dead moments when nothing seems to happen? When you're waiting but can't do anything because you do not know how long the wait will be? Then you maybe start fretting and fuming wishing it was over, wishing you'd already be in the next phase/day/room/level...

A friend of mine has a beautiful habit of posing the glass on the table for a few seconds after toasting to say, "I remember you, here, now!" That way not even a simple toast passes unnoticed, un-celebrated... and what is important is not the yet-not-here-thing but the here and now.

I'm doing that now, waiting for the truck to come and carry the tangible evidence my life in Italy away... not with a glass of wine in my hand, but just sitting here in the midst of boxes, in a half empty kitchen, not just looking back but looking at the here and now and saying, "This moment I want to cherish and remember".

Io ti ricordo qua adesso!

Of Poverty, Perception and Deception

I have been thinking lately a lot about letting go and its connection to the perception of poverty. I'm not talking about absolute poverty, where the means of survival are seriously compromised (lack of food/water/oxygen), but of perceived poverty of all sorts.

If I think I'm poor, I will see myself as needy, look for anyone/anything to fill my gap and therefore open myself up to all sorts of snares...

How many people for example think they are lacking in beauty, and therefore are open to all sorts of advertised products, phony diets and flattery, without actually coming to terms with the fact that the first step to beauty comes from within!

If I think I'm under-appreciated, I will easily fall pray to being critical and become envious and stingy with my praise, because I think that I should be receiving not giving... and yet, it is a form of slavery!

It is easy, but it is still a skewered view of reality, to see oneself as the eternal victim of a zero sum game, where everything somebody else has is somehow taken from me leaving me with less simply because somebody else has it.

Life is abundant and generous! There is more in this world than what we actually need, more of love, more of light, more of friendship, more of being honored... we live in a surplus world where generosity leads to inner health and strength more than hoarding ever will.

Also, I think there is a distinction to be made between lacking and being poor. I can be lacking many things (time, sleep, money, handcream, smiles, patience), but that doesn't mean I'm poor. I might not have all that I want, but still I'm not poor. I become poor the moment I allow my lack to define me.

And that will open me up for deception of many kinds, because it is based on un-truth, unreality. The reality is that I can afford to be generous, even in the midst of my lack, because being stingy will not give me anything either, whereas generosity and abundance is built in the very fibre of the universe as one of its key principles... think of the amount of sunsets, and seeds, and stars, and trees and rivers and dust particles and sperm cells: there is simply an overflow of stuff!

The antidote to hoarding, the key to letting go, the key to generosity is found in perceiving myself as provided for, as a have and not as a have-not! Not denying the lack, but not allowing it to define me either... It seems that sometimes the only way to change how I see myself in this respect is by being generous... NOW!

Decided to start blogging for the simple reason that not all can be aired on FB. Maybe this can be a sort of an open diary... we'll see :)

I chose the name for my blog from Shakespeare (Ariels song in the Tempest starting "Full fathoms five..."), and I love the definition of sea change:

1. a striking change, as in appearance, often for the better.
2. any major transformation or alteration.
3. a transformation brought about by the sea.

I think that of all of them I'm definitely in for number one and number two isn't too bad either...

My life is in such a stage of change that it is diccicult to know how all this will end, what the outcome will be, but the name I chose as my middle name for FB, Chrysalis, describes what I I'm aiming for: what once was an earthbound little caterpillar will be an airborne thing of beauty :)

Whether it will be visible for outside observers is another thing...

Thinking about change, it's one of those tension things: too much of it and you become a rootless, anxiety filled drifter and too little of it and one just hardens into this rock like formation, defending itself by rigidity. It is as if we were meant to have enough stability to give us the courage to change and to chart unexplored seas ... but not so much that the stability of mutable things defines us.

I so like these quotes I found concerning change and letting go:

‎"We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us"
Joseph Campbell

"Letting go isn't about giving up. It's about accepting that there are things that cannot be." Author unknown

Change becomes difficult if I am holding on to everything I have, if I consider myself so poor that I do not dare to lose even a nugget of what I have amassed, be it material or more intangible things.

So in this blog I want to explore and share what this seachange brings... the best is yet to come!