embracing what is and choosing hope

These days I am learning to look at what is and embrace it rather than pining for what I would want it to be.

It doesn't seem to come easy, though. There have been days (and many of them) when I have just been looking backwards, and instead of counting my blessings, I have been counting my losses, as if remembering them all somehow was vital. As if by remembering I was slowly building an identity that says, "I am the woman to whom all that happened, and here she is, defined by her losses". 

I would read all the stories about refugees and people who have been maimed or disfigured and feel I was connected somehow, thinking, "yep, that's me too, but with the difference that my scars are on the inside, and nobody else can see that actually half of me is missing, and even though I still have my passport, I have no sense of home anymore". My identity was slowly turning into that of a perpetual victim, and I was becoming a memorial to past pain.

And then one day not so long ago I caught myself saying to a friend, "My next 20 years will be the most productive of my life". I was startled, because as I said it, I actually realized that is what I really "know" to be true. And then in another occasion I heard myself telling my life story and describe these past five years as a dark dip in an otherwise great adventure with lots of turns and twists of the plot, making it all the more interesting.

The change happened, I think, when slowly but surely, I chose hope. And chose to embrace what is. Not making it my identity, but rather making it a part of the unique story that is mine. I still wish for many things to be different, but hope is more solid than a wish. With hope comes the realization that there are indeed things that I am in charge of, one of which definitely is to be more clear about who I think I am.

I embrace a rock solid hope of a bright future, but whether it turns out to be like I envision it now or not, I am still me. My bruises or the flowers in my hair are not me, not even a part of me. But they most definitely are what has happened to me. Especially the flowers.

messy, tidy and tolerance

I'm not the tidiest person in the world. Nor am the messiest, but probably I have a higher tolerance for clutter and apparent mess than many of my friends. I'm not bothered by messy homes, mine or those of my friends (after all, I'm more interested in them than in their houses). Dirty clothes/floors/bathrooms bother me, messy don't. Also, if I ever visit your home, I will not criticize you for your home not being in perfect order, nor will I be offended if you visiting me feel an irressistible urge to organize my things/kitchen/cupboard.

Only recently have I realized that this is actually a gift in disguise, or rather the flip side of a gift.

I am also good at seeing structure underlying an apparent chaos; I can see patterns emerging and similarities popping up easily, unfazed by the clutter that might surround them. I'm  delight in spotting talent and beauty in all sorts of places, again not bothred by the disorder around them.  

I like having people in my home, regardless of the mess they make. And just like I can see the order that one day will be even in my house, so, in the lives of many, I can see structure, talent and beautiful patterns even when they are still buried underneath a lot of immature chaos. The downside of this all is, alas, also a very present reality: do I tolerate the present chaos simply because I childishly believe one day it will be no more, simply because I can see what it could be? 

As always, beauty might lie in the eye of the beholder...  and sometimes order too!

A New Season

It seems like with the turning of the year also the season has changed.

No longer is it the season for goodbyes and mourning, but the tide has turned, Aslan has roared and this will be made new!

It is a season of welcome! So welcome new directions, welcome new experiences, welcome new people into my life, welcome change!

As a tangible sign of this, my time at the Morning Star (see http://annelis-seachange.blogspot.fi/2011_03_01_archive.html) nears its end, and I will move to an apartment that has been in my family from before I was born. In fact, my Dad used to live there when he was child.
So the new and the old are once more blended together, resulting in a visible/tangible example of all-things-made-new!

With this move, it feels as if my wandering years are over,  and that I will have a more stable base than I have had in years. Yet, it doesn't seem that  would be confined by this stability, rather the opposite. Having a base I will be free to come and to go, and still find pasture :)

So, goodbye Morning Star and hello new life!

why share?

Sharing. That's what blogs and Facebooks and Twitters are all about. Sharing something of yourself for others to see.

Why do we do it? 

I don't claim to know all the answers even for why I do it, let alone others. But maybe it has to do with weaving. I weave a community by the words and pictures I share. I create a reality, a story, a world into which others can enter and become part of my story, as I become part of theirs. And so as I share something of what is important to me, I also partcipate in weaving fine webs that hold people together, connected to  one another.

To my amazement I keep finding that even the kind of "lightweight" sharing that takes place in FB actually creates a platform for friendship to happen and to be maintained active. There are people who write about their mundane life so interestingly taht even my dull and normal days get gilded with humor through their experiences.

Lately I have also become aware what a potent way of encouragement  this sharing is. In following some of my friends blogs and FB updates I have found what the old Italian saying talks about:

                                             

                                         Mal comune - mezzo gaudio!

Even the greatest pain and the saddest sadness actually get less heavy to bear when you know that someone is going through the same, or that at least they (try to) understand, or are at least willing to read/listen what you have to share. 

I think we were created to go through life together,  sharing stuff  - and that's why we do it!

peeling scabs

I have always liked speed. Fast cars, airplanes, boats, bike rides... you name it, and if it makes the air whistle in your ears and tousles your hair, I like it. And I've never been very patient with anything slow. 

And now I find that even this sea-change is not and cannot be the whirlwind (I love the sound of this word :) experience I thought it should or could be.

Somebody has likened having your heart broken to open-heart surgery, and as our brains seem to process emotional pain in the same place as physical pain, it is no wonder that these past 3 years I have often felt like a convalescent surgery-patient. The recovery process simply takes a lot more time and is way more profound than I had thought. Many times I've asked like kids in the back-seat of the car, "Are we there yet?" and made almost exactly the same sound of "mgmgngngnnaafhmpf" when I've realized the answer is no.

So, slowly, I've learned to give myself the permission to take the time I need to heal and not to be embarrassed about it. 

And I'm learning to be patient with the slow thing that is called me and my no-longer-bleeding-but-still-at-times-aching heart. 

The most amazing thing seems to happen as a consequence: as I let go of the expectations I have on myself, and stop peeling the scab off the wounds of my heart (you know the way we did as kids? I still have scars to show that that really doesn't help the healing to be quicker at all), the miraculous takes place... left alone in the silent velvety darkness of my heart, the seeds of joy, life, peace and laughter hidden in my heart have had the space to grow, and all of a sudden I find that I'm truly alive again, and that the night is passing...

and so time picks up speed again... :)

Aslan has roared and Spring is on its way!

time: kairos vs chronos

At the beginning of this year I was struck again by the different notions of time and how life simply doesn't follow the chronological ordering of time.

Life flows not only by days, weeks and years, but is also marked by once-in-a-lifetime events, chance meetings of utter significance, special encounters, eureka! moments. And they cannot be ordered to come. Chronology can be planned, but these special times cannot. The ancient Greeks called this other kind of time 'kairos'.

'Kairos' moments cannot be fabricated or had at a whim, they seem to be more in the line of something that interrupts the 'chronos' of our normal life, and brings a challenge to change in its wake.

So much of my life as a researcher revolves around 'chronos': deadlines, extensions of grants etc, but yet, the substance of my research comes from those 'kairos' moments periods of time.

Wikipedia says, "In rhetoric kairos is "a passing instant when an opening appears which must be driven through with force if success is to be achieved."

The connotation there is that not only is there a window of opportunity, but that skill is also needed to use it, to actually achieve that which the specific time-bound opportunity makes possible for one to achieve. In built in 'kairos' is the idea of the "right time" for something to happen.

I find myself this spring in such a time in my research, in a season where it truly will be possible to write what I have so long carried in me. But in order to be successful, I must take hold of the crucial time, lest it passes.

'Kairos' has many more meanings too, and it is an integral part of Christian theology as well, the Eternal intersects the temporal at 'kairos' times.

What ever the kind of 'kairos' given to us this coming chronological year, may we not miss even one them!

NOW is the right time!

being yourself

I've been thinking of what people actually mean when they say that with thus-and-so I can/cannot be myself.

What kind of self are talking about?

There is this grumpy Monday morning self that emerges before my cup of morning coffee... and there is the self that is delighted pink just because of some happy thoughts... and there is the sad self and there is the self that keeps on analyzing things...sometimes I really don't want to be myself, because I find myself irritating, maddening, boring and at times pathetic... (but I'm stuck with me, for better or for worse :)

Some selves come out of their hiding only when they feel really safe, and some of the lioness in me only comes out when my kids are attacked, and some selves are very susceptible to weather, sleep and food... At times I feel there's and an entire kingdom within :)

So, maybe what we actually mean is that to be with people who allow you to be all of the above, who allow you to keep on growing, who challenge you and accept you, who are able to see beyond the immediate, forgiving the occasional slip... they are the ones with whom you can be yourself indeed!

I read a phrase that really caught me:

Don't aim at pleasing, but remember that YOU are loved!

that sums it all up: to be myself I need to know that I am loved, and then I can be free to be or not to be... and free to change that which needs changing... and free to look with eyes of mercy on the other selves, be they mine or others...

let mercy triumph over judgement, again!

Clean bed linen and safe people

One of the most comforting and snuggle-inducing memories of my childhood are the evenings when the bed linen had just been changed and I could crawl in bed and just draw deep breaths smelling the crispness and cleanness of my sheets. Especially if it was early autumn, and they had dried outside in the wind, smelling of sunshine and of coming autumn... mmh!

I think that the people I instantly feel close to have something similar about them. They have been through various cycles of life, involving a lot of cleansing and tumbling and shaking and drying, but the outcome is that the dirt is out, they smell nice, and even when you snuggle close, they are still safe and clean.

With people, though, the definition of clean doesn't mean someone who has never had any dirt in their lives, that would exclude all of us. I think the safe-and-clean category is made of people who don't cling to their dirt, who are open and willing to be clean (and cleansed) and who are mindful of what makes relationships safe: trust, respect, kindness, acceptance...

I want excitement and adventures probably more than most people, but that's just outer stuff. I like reckless (within limits :) BUT the people I want closest in my life are like the bed linen of my childhood. They are safe to be with!

The other thing I associate that snuggly feeling with is flannel, the kind of flannel the shirts my Dad used to wear were made of. It is unbeatable!, and so for years I had the best of both worlds: flannel bed linen :) It is the absolute tops on cold winter nights... I wonder what the equivalent in people would look like... ;)

Beautiful people - they are everywhere

Lately I've been really impressed with the beauty of people in general. I find it absolutely astonishing that the world is so full-packed with such amounts of beauty, lavishly poured out everywhere.

And there are so many ways of being beautiful too. The other day I was watching my parents, already old, walking hand in hand down the street, both quite wrinkly and with a physical problem or two, but wearing their dark dark sun glasses, like some retired Men in Black -couple :) I'm pretty sure they dont' see what I see when I look at them, but in my eyes they are SO beautiful.

To mention another one, I was reading the blog of a friend of mine. And she is just doing such an incredibly good job bringing up her son as a single mom. Such beauty of action, of life, of daring to invest in someone, even when its really taxing. I'm not sure she sees what I see in her... the grace-in-action that she embodies... but the way she goes about it IS beautiful.

Generosity is beautiful. Maybe that's why I see so much beauty around me, it seems that I'm surrounded with such bighearted people, who share out of kindness, not because they have too much...

Today as I was having lunch with a very dear friend, the waitress' eyes were just sparkling at the thought that she could treat us to freshly baked bread and butter... in the midst being very busy, such generous care and kindness. Again, I was really touched by the beauty of her gesture.

I think most people are quite beautiful, if one has eyes to see. I'm also convinced that it probably is a secret that they themselves are not aware of... the way a girl listened to her friend looking so intent, or the way a father holds his son's hand when they get on the tram, or the way a young girls skirt was moving as she walked... beauty everywhere, in words, movements, forms, colours, shapes, and sometimes even ruins of various kinds can be beautiful, or tell a story of great beauty and strength. I'm thinking of a few sagging tummies and other parts, some varicose veins and puffed eyes, all "ruins" if looked from the outside, but for those who have eyes to see, they a signs of love, and of daring and of giving generously of yourself to and for the next generation...

Beauty might be in the eye of the beholder, so may we all walk with open eyes!

Home??

Sitting in my hotel room, I just realized once again, that I have been blessed with a most peculiar gift: I feel at home almost anywhere!

Being a researcher, I immediately try to dissect this feeling to see what it is made of, but I think it has to do with presence; I'm present here and now, and so in a way, my home is here too. The rest is just location :)

Also, it might be a habit as well: I've traveled a lot and so I have learned to carve out that little space I call mine wherever I am. In a way the space I possess becomes an extension of my home, a physical place I call mine.

But don't we all do that? in a restaurant the table becomes mine the moment I've sat down or placed my coat on a chair... or like I witnessed today, in a full-packed conference room, a lady got up and the person standing asked, "will you come back or can I sit on your chair?" but since when was that chair hers? or that table mine?

Or is it a question not of space but of "dominion"? If I can decide what happens there, then the place is mine, as in, "no, you cant' , it's my place/seat/table/turn/etc..."

Or maybe this just reflects my vagabond-like nature; I like to roam, and to feel at home is essential to one's well-being, and so this is a functional mindset enabling me to do what I need to do...

One way or another, welcome to my place, wherever that may be ;)

Rites of passage - divorce

For so many things that are important watersheds in one's life, there are different rites of passages.

Births, christenings, confirmation, wedding, graduation, moving into a new house, funerals, etc.

Amazingly, I found that there are no such things for divorce. There are even funerals for pets, but when one's marriage is over and has died, there is only a muted clink of the mail box, or a comment, "have you heard X and Y have also divorced?". All the tragedy of a divorce, all the sadness, all the life that has ended allowed to vanish just like a puff of smoke...

This small puff - all of me revolts at the idea, because it is NOT a small thing for two lives knitted together to be ripped apart as happens in divorce. And the memories...!

Silence simply isn't an option!

So, I wanted to change that, at least for myself. Many years ago, before God and people I promised to love, cherish and to stand by my husband, come what may. Now that he is no longer my husband, I did not want this breaking not get the attention it merits, but wanted to acknowledge before God and people that this marriage has died and now needs a funeral.

I invited for this (what should one call it? divorcening? funeral-for-marriage?) some of the friends who have walked with me for a long time, long enough to know me and gracious enough to love me nevertheless ;)

(One friend came with the 'hugest' bouquet I have ever seen, a bouquet of comfort and hope she called it. It was amazing: it had all my favorite flowers in it, even sweat-peas that I had had so many years ago in my wedding-bouquet! )

None of us had ever done anything like this, so we had no script to follow, but we all agreed that what sounded good and proper, was to do some sort of a reversal of marriage: acknowledging before God and people that this marriage has died and was therefore over, to proclaim forgiveness and release from all bonds, and to pronounce a blessing over me as I am starting a new life.

It was an amazing time!!!! I had thought it would be more like a funeral, with lots of tears and crying, as one does when something/someone one has loved has died, but it had an unexpected strong celebratory quality: there is life after death, and newness of life is a reality, and there is a blessing in starting life over! For a moment I think we all felt the truth of life swallowing death, a foretaste of that which is to come!

I felt utterly privileged, and very much like a bride: starting a new life of which I have no idea how it will be, but surrounded by friends at every side, willing to walk with me; it cannot but be good! Where ever I turned in my small living room, I saw friendly faces, encountered warm smiles, heard words of encouragement and affirmation!
Carried by love and prayers I walk in this newness of life! Feels so light and so free!

I think this ceremony most affected two things. First of all, the perception I have of myself. I now see myself now longer as the to-be-pitied ex-wife, but I see myself as the beloved, daughter, friend, sister, mother - all of which no divorce can wreck. The core of who I am hasn't changed, and now it is no longer obscured by the ashes of my failed marriage.

Secondly, I realized that I am free from the debt marriage creates. No longer do I have to carry burdens of the other one. Visually I just saw myself leaving a very heavy load of stones in a big sack lying there on the road, while I continue to hop, skip and jump ahead :) carrying only my own (manageable) burdens :)

When one is married, one automatically has a debt of love, of loyalty, of faithfulness, of pursuing happiness as one, no longer merely as being 'I' and 'you' but as being a 'we'. This bond was severed, and I am now officially free from this particular kind of debt! I think that because I had not wanted to be free from this debt, the impact was (and still is) so great: I, no longer bound by the particular 'we' and 'us', will not any longer carry burdens in the name of love for my husband! It was right for me to carry them when the promise still bound me. Now my debt and burden-bearing is over!

As a Christian, it was also of utter importance for me too to do all this before God. It seems that He takes promises very seriously, and since my marriage vows were made to Him and with Him as the main witness, I wanted to include God in the act of acknowledging the death of the marriage those promises had upheld. So, that's what we did, this circle of friends and I.

But not only that... as God is also the source of all blessing, and all newness and life, it was also very important for me to once again start my journey into the unknown under His blessing and in His company. I see Him as the endless source of courage, hope, unexplored paths and adventure, and so to know that I can walk closely with Him into all this newness creates in me an expectation that I will also be equipped to live and love wildly, not bound by past experiences!

and that is nothing short of miraculous!!!! There have been times when all seemed to be pointless, and it seemed as all joy had simply left and moved to another universe...

well, now I know that it hasn't!

The best is yet to come :)

feelings and thoughts and truth... what a mix!

I was told last week, or reminded actually, that my feelings are just mere feelings. One does not necessarily need to follow them by actions, to obey what the feelings suggest one should do. Also, my emotions/feelings are not the truth about any given thing/situation/person laden as they are with all sorts of stuff (both inner and outer, past experiences, states of body and soul and spirit etc). I can't determine their accuracy by the intensity of the feeling.... ! An emotion cannot actually drown me, change reality, force me to do anything... It is merely an emotion!!

As a side remark, though, this was so refreshingly counter women's-magazine & Hollywood movies' type of advice, which tells you to go where your heart leads you.

And we all know where that is: usually down- a "I-have-to-do-what-feels-good-for-me-right-now-while-ignoring-everybody-else", but what this advice fails to tell you is where all of this will lead you and it never tells you what really happens after you do. Sometimes, of course, we need to put ourselves first, but I suspect it is not necessary nearly as often as these magazines would have us believe, or as our amazingly selfish hearts tell us.

The same person then proceeded to remind me that also my thoughts are merely thoughts, and as such are not the truth. They may or may not be, but a lot of the stuff I hold as self-evident might not be true at all, especially the kind of beliefs that result in thoughts like "what's the use?" "I'll never succeed" "everybody else has got it so together" .

I need more objective parameters to determine the truthfulness of what goes on in my mind or soul .

So far so good, and all of this may even sound very trivial indeed, and even self-evident ;) but for a person who earns her living by thinking, this actually is a big deal. This realization hit home even more strongly after I've just discovered that my carefully analyzed research data might need to be looked at again and might not even be so clear as I thought (sic!) it was!!!

Add to this then the fact that I tend to trust my intuition and hence feelings about things/events/people, the meaning of undergoing a sea-change takes on a new dimension!

Not only do I need to re-examine my research data, but I need to re-examine the things I think/feel in even greater detail: do they actually reflect the true state of things or not?

Now that is the question!

inhabitant of the Morning Star!

Today I'm moving to an apartment which I have chosen on my own, for the first time ever! I really like the place and the house is called Morning Star!!!!! The house is old, built in 1907 and it is under the protection of The National Board of Antiquities ( which, they state on their website, preserves Finland’s material cultural heritage).

Funnily, it feels like a "one small step for a (wo)man, a giant leap for mankind" . It makes me feel young, inexperienced and exited, all at the same time. I feel standing at the threshold of a great adventure, expecting new & wonderful things to dawn (well, yea, what else if one lives in/on a Morning Star?). I'm finding myself doing things I didn't know I could! And I SO enjoy the sense of freedom that brings. I still can't hammer nails, and don't quite know how to use a drill... but a year from now? just watch-out, I just might become the next female version of Bob the builder:

But before I can get to all that new and exiting stuff, I will have to haul a truckload of my things to the Morning Star, and so the mundane meets the ephemeral: so like the first Moon-walker, I need to do something very concrete to walk into my Morning Star: a giant step, a quantum leap into my wonderful future, so I'm hitting the road right now!

trailing clouds of glory...deja' vu the other way round

After dreaming of all sorts of unrelated things last night I woke up in the morning longing for things I thought I had had in the past.

But then when I sat down and started to think about it, I realized, that I am actually tapping into a longing that probably has never had its realized counterpart in this visible world...

It felt utterly strange, finding myself crying for something as if I had lost it, then only to realize that I actually have not yet experienced it... kind of a deja' vu the other way round...

The poets of old thought that we are born with a tie to heaven that then causes us to be longing for something ... but maybe there is a dream embedded in our hearts, regardless of where it came from that pulls us and draws us with an irresistible longing... and if we try to kill that longing or bury it, we become less alive and less ourselves in doing so...

I think I have been born with this longing for something gloriousn and sparkling and great, involving a lot of laughter, love, harmony, mirth, dancing, contentment and good food. Something like a huge party involving everyone I know... a gigantic Street Party of sorts! I think that is what I have secrectly being trying to create with every single party I've ever given... soon it's the time for a new one, trying to capture a bit more of that!

William Wordsworth said in his Ode to Immortality that he thinks our longing is something we knew in childhood, the sense of endless possibilities calling us to explore... (I love the idea that we come to the world "trailing clouds of glory"), but that it then dies a bit by the light of the "common day". I think I was born with more glitter and glimmer to just buy into the creed of common days! I'm not sure there are any.

On the other hand, maybe it was Mrs Wordsworth who had to change all the diapers etc while her hubby busy was poetisezing (i.e. writing poems ;) and so she might have another opinion of the gloriousness of babies and what they come trailing...

Be that as may... in any case, there is a longing in me which I cannot but wonder about, is it a "has been" or a "not-yet-here" thing that it targets?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,	60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come	65
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,	70
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;	75
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

My bucket-list

I saw this movie some time ago with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman talking about the things they want to do before they die (but they were much closer to death than I think I am :)

So, (not that I think I'm close to dying), I've still been thinking about things I absolutely want to see/do during this lifetime (not that I think there are more than one, but that's another story :)

Anyway, here goes:

I want to... (or should I say, I will do the following?)

see the world's oldest tree

participate in an event where there are more than 100 000 people present

see real live hummingbirds

see dolphins and hear them laugh (or whatever it is they do which sounds like it :)

drive a car with a Ferrari-like motor & sound & speed (Porsche, Maserati, etc will also do)

go para-gliding again

see northern lights somewhere above the Arctic Circle (I've seen them once in Helsinki)

attend/organize AND participate in a masquerade

see the sun set over the Pacific Ocean

see parrots in the jungle

learn to hammer nails without twisting them and /or hitting my thumb or any other finger

go white-water rafting

....

I do have other dreams/wishes/ intentions tugged away in my heart, but the above ones are the sort of do-able ones, mostly requiring organization of resources & some planning. My heart is hiding its more demanding dreams, and some of them still sleep...

I'm exited to think that I might be able to tick some of them maybe even this year... not that I have anything planned, but I do believe that if you do not aim at something, you'll inevitable end up somewhere else ;)

Reading my list, I so sound like an explorer-wanna-be ... but who knows, wishes just might come true :)

what is your bucket-list like?

Cui bono?

I've been thinking a lot about change. All kinds of change. Partly this has been prompted by having met a lot of old friends who say things like 'oh, you haven't changed at all' and the last time we met was years ago.

There are some things about myself I would really like to change, but the outward ones are not on the top of my list. I like to be me, "warts, farts and all" (excuse my expression :) , but there are many inner characteristics and thought patterns I would like to see changed.

It takes so much time, though, that at times I am tempted to believe that real change isn't even possible.

That's why keeping a diary is so helpful... I can track my life and it encourages me to see that in the midst of terrible turmoil, and maybe even because of it, I have actually changed in some aspects. I like to think that I'm more patient, more fearless and less demanding.

Well, maybe I'm not the best judge of that... I need mirrors in my life, people close enough to me to warn me when the change I aim at takes me to wrong directions.

Because as alluring as change might seem when one feels stagnated, the all important question is the same all good detectives ask when solving a murder, Cui bono?

I so hope that my answer to that question would not merely be

Anneli

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 :)