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.

Homesick

Rome, St Peter cathedral.

Living abroad is exciting, full of experience and often a great adventure.
In my opinion usually people do not regret to live abroad, but it is almost certain they will be homesick, every now and then.
 
Just thinking on how it is Rome at about this time of the year.

                                                                                 The air is cold, but still not too much,

                                                                            and the smell of the caldarroste

around you is a clear sign of the autumn. 

A stroll around the city center brings you in adorable places, where people are meeting up since almost 3000 years.

Rome is magical, 

no doubt about that.