Parting.

"Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,That I shall say good night till it be morrow" 

 Shakespeare  knew. Parting is always bittersweet. It is not only when you're leaving for good,

 it is as well when you're leaving for short period of time.

I think this is due to the fact that leaving is always separate ourselves from the comfort of the known, usual routine for something new, exciting and unexpected. And if when you're 20 the question if the unexpected and new is more desirable than the routine is utterly rhetorical, when you hit 30 this starts to be a question that wants an answer.

 

So, so long to the new at all cost. We start calculating if change is worth it. We start calculating the consequences of our decisions, and to consider the probabilities of success.

Basically, getting older means becoming a mathematician!

Already December

It is already December. Time really flies.

I remember when I was a teenager I couldn't wait to be eighteen, to be "adult".
One day one of my aunts told me: "Enjoy these years because from 18 to 30 time will run and then will just fly".I remember the thought that my teenager self had: completely disbelief in these words.

And now I discovered, as I think everyone just after 30 discover, they were true.
Youth is over the first time you caught yourself thinking "They were right", they being any older relative of your childhood who tried to prepare yourself for the adult life and disappointment. At one moment, (one sad moment usually for women) you stop to grow up and you start to age.
The  process is biologically the same but, ah, how different it is in our mind! You are not anymore a world of possibilities, you start to experience the consequences of your choices. Oh, yes, it is still possible to change and there are still million choices out there to be made, but you will lose the freedom of taking the risk, taking the chance, because "Every action causes an equal and contrary reaction" will be more that a physic law. It is, as a matter of fact, a life's law. And there is nothing to complain about, it is only important to become aware of it. A superficial ignorance of the life is a prerogative of young people.

Growing up is loosing this prerogative.

Changes.

Time flies. The changes in our lives are main reason we notice that (beside the wrinkles).

There is a moment when everything once stable and sure starts to change, and we lose the safe structure of your childhood. 
Someone passes away, someone else moves abroad, and all your kid's certainties are challenged from the foundation. 

 This is not necessarily a sad process, but surely it is a melancholic one. 

It is as well true that the only way a human being has to proceed, develop and progress is through changes. From this point of view they are our best friends: they bring us toward the person that we have the potentiality to be. 
To live below our potentialities is a source of frustration. Often we do not even recognize it, dragged as we are by the force of the habit, one of the strongest influence on men and women lives. We settle, we stop to look for something and we try to convince ourselves that we actually found something, even if the evidences point to the contrary. This process goes on until a change comes to destabilize us. 

Therefore, welcome to changes.

 They could not be what we wanted, but they are almost always what we need.

Too busy to be sad

These days I've been pretty busy at work. It is a wonderful sensation, isn't, having the brain busy working and thinking, and the time flies enjoyably.
 I found that this is true even when the job you are up to it's not the job you imagined for you.
 I think this is due to the amazing adaptability of the human being.
We are made to be happy, and we try to be so despite what is happening in our lives, despite the conditions w e live in, or the choices we made.

 This is reassuring: we will always find a way to be happy. 

 Unless what we deeply want is to be unhappy: the easiest thing of all.

Economic though

There is no sign the economic crisis is leaving Europe. 

Oh, I know what the economists and politicians say. In 1 year, 2 years, 3 years we'll be back to normal (the length of the period needed to recover always depend on how far the elections are!), but they seem to do not see what's going on in the streets, in the daily life.

 They often do not even know how much costs 1 liter of milk! Yesterday I went for grocery shopping, and I noticed another increases of 2 cents on a product. It is not a huge increase, but in the last year this product increases of 1/2 cents every two months. It is not a good sign.

I do not think it would be possible to be back to normal, to what was considered normal in the past. 

Honestly, for me this is not a bad news. This unbelievable, worldwide economic crisis changed for ever our paradigm of what is wealth, what is a good income, what is a good job, even.

It was about time that we change our economic paradigm. We have been relying in credit: spending money that we did not have, upon the hope that we'll earn them in the future. 

Now, we cannot bet on it. We do not know if we will earn any kind of money in the future. So, we have to stop spending what we do not have. 

And it is not a bad news, after all.

It is changing to what is was before, way before, when there were no credit card, no loan, no possibility of owing to someone for the rest of your life. 

In a way, it is a new opportunity to be free, to do not have our life controlled by someone else. 

I think we should take the chance.

Silentium est aurum

Silence.

Silence can be everything. It can say everything. Sometimes, nothing is more self explanatory, or clearer, or ...sad.

It something that has a double meaning, thou. As it can be deadly and cold, it can be as well warm and comfortable. The exact same thing, a totally different meaning.

This let me think that silence after all has no unique essence, but is multiform, volatile, ethereal.

Something new, something old.

It has been a nice week end. It gives me a bit of flu, for the tiredness and the cold, and the rain, (normal administration for an Irish week end) but it has been a nice one.

Travelling, even for a short distance, it enhances the relax of the week end.
I think this might be due with a sensation of escape. Even if we like our job, our friends'circle, we always have a sensation we need a break, a place where we can be safe from the daily worries and even from the daily joys.
   Why is this?  
             It is just because the mankind is eternally unsatisfied?
                    Is it because we want always something more, something different?
  And once we had that something different, we want back what we had before.


It is an eternal race with the next wish. At the end of the day, it is always the same old story. Even writing these lines I reckon that this is so trite to be boring, but sometimes we need to pause one second and reflect about the ugly truth of the trite common sense.

                                                There is no escape to this.

Little things II

Relaxing time with friends after work, chatting about our lives and our dreams.
Coming back home and finding your flatmates on the couch watching the Champions League.
Laughing with your cousin about Disney movie.
Going out in the balcony to smell the winter night.

Every little helps, as a famous supermarket said... And it's so true. The little things are the ones which make your day worth to be lived.
Happiness is reachable from everyone, if only  we learn how to see.

Boredom

It is a strange feeling, boredom. Why do we get bored?
It happens even when we actually do have something to do.
Baudelaire understood the essence of boredom. It is something that covers our spirit when we are doing what is not in line with ourselves, when we would like to do something totally different.
Sometimes, we are not aware of that, and the Ennui comes and let us know that we're going in the wrong direction.

So, even being bored is useful.

LXXVI - Spleen
J'ai plus de souvenirs que si j'avais mille ans.

Un gros meuble à tiroirs encombrés de bilans,
De vers, de billets doux, de procès, de romances,
Avec de lourds cheveux roulés dans des quittances,
Cache moins de secrets que mon triste cerveau.
C'est une pyramide, un immense caveau,
Qui contient plus de morts que la fosse commune.
- Je suis un cimetière abhorré de la lune,
Où comme des remords se traînent de longs vers
Qui s'acharnent toujours sur mes morts les plus chers.
Je suis un vieux boudoir plein de roses fanées,
Où gît tout un fouillis de modes surannées,
Où les pastels plaintifs et les pâles Boucher
Seuls, respirent l'odeur d'un flacon débouché.

Rien n'égale en longueur les boiteuses journées,
Quand sous les lourds flocons des neigeuses années
L'ennui, fruit de la morne incuriosité
Prend les proportions de l'immortalité.
- Désormais tu n'es plus, ô matière vivante!
Qu'un granit entouré d'une vague épouvante,
Assoupi dans le fond d'un Sahara brumeux
Un vieux sphinx ignoré du monde insoucieux,
Oublié sur la carte, et dont l'humeur farouche
Ne chante qu'aux rayons du soleil qui se couche.

Les Fleurs du mal - Spleen et Idéal - Charles Baudelaire

Monday morning.

Monday morning. Again. It took a lot to be optimistic on Monday morning too.
I do not know why this is so painful. Everything looks grayer on Mondays. The same weather that seems so lovely on Saturdays, on Mondays is just awful. It's winter, it's cold, it's raining. Even if tomorrow all of those will make you smile, today they're the end of the world.

Until you allow them to be so. If you stop one moment the flow of the complaining to realise that is not the actual thing, but is only the day that makes everything sad, you can rebel against this silliness.

Mondays will always come, always once a week: why make ourselves miserable once a week for the rest of our lives, for something that is totally out of our control?

Therefore, so long Mondays mood! I've decided it is not so bad, after all.

Time.

Winter arrived. The cold in the air hits your face when you're walking, but it's not unpleasant.
The seasons' changes are welcome: they mark the time flying away, that means you're still living. Often we are afraid for the time passing by, but I'm wondering why. After all, the only alternative of getting old is dying. Not so bad, if you're looking at it from this point of view.
It's a question of perspective, as everything is. We are able to create our happiness or our desperation, it's a decision on which perspective you want to choose.

Happiness is nothing but a decision.

"Mais les braves gens n'aiment pas que l'on suive une autre route qu'eux"

(But the good folks don't like it if you take a different road than they do.)

I love this song of Brassens, La mauvaise reputation. It expresses with poetical lyrics and beautiful music what I was trying to say about the major problem of democracy:

People do not accept and do not like who thinks differently (unless it has an apple... :) )

The more they (who are they? Let's say, persons in general) want to prove they are right, the more they blame who does not share their idea. 

And the saddest thing is that they are persuaded to be democratic, and to fight for everyone to have the right to expresses himself. 

"Non les brav's gens n'aiment pas queL'on suive une autre route qu'eux, Tout l'mond' viendra me voir pendu, Sauf les aveugles, bien entendu".

The ugly truth is that everyone is free to say what he thinks and to think what he wants, with the only condition that has to be the same thing everyone else does think and say.

Differences.

The culture of the majority is not impartial, it only claims to be impartial. In the reality, it imposes its own form of life to minorities, if they want to access to the political debate, at the price of their own identity. And when an idea starts to be shared by a majority, immediately takes this habit, and suddenly thinking differently means to be outsiders, not enough intelligent, or not enough literate.  It is happening what John Stuart Mill predicted in “On Liberty”. The liberal democratic political view, wanting to consider everyone the same regardless of the differences, it activates a blindness to the same public that, instead of recognizing the presence of difference, claims to do not pay attention to it. This behavior produces an abstract equality,that actually disregards the rights of individuals.

In other words, it is the human being that is not able to really have different opinion without blaming the other, or it is only a defect of the democracy?