DAY 598

autumn's finds

November must be one of my favorite months. There is something in the air, in the light, in the weather that always changes my mood. Even this year, even only after five days. It is already working its magic.

I have gone through many stages along my process of mourning. Indeed I have gone through all the stages of loss and grief many times, and I have started the whole process all over again at least three times, or even more. It was my response to the consecutive death of a dear friend, my sweet cat and another best friend in the space of six months. It was also my response to my own impotency.

It may seem a cliché after all the texts and information existing about them, but I have found myself coming and going from one stage to another during all this year, although coping with my pain has been a deeply personal experience. I am still far from a total acceptance. I still experience anger and sadness, but I have now many moments of calm and gratitude. As I have not experienced the stages in the order that they are usually listed (denial, anger, bargaining , depression and acceptance), I have always had them, but now  -since mid October or so- they are much more consistent.

Nevertheless, one of the things I have been longing for -even in the best days- has been the sense of joy and illusion that was part of my nature. Even being an analytical introvert, even when I have gone through many difficult times along my life, I have had always an active, venturesome and proactive attitude. Regardless of sadness or pain, I always found a reason for living: a new project, a new dream, a new challenge… but not this time. This time, I have felt that this little spark inside me was fading. I have felt that life could be futile... that maybe my spirit was giving up.

But November's energy is blowing on that little flame and I am starting to feel its warmth inside my chest again. And with it, a new life is emerging. A new being is appearing. A new strength is taking form. A new future is coming into focus.

All this is still a bit blurred, fragile. I still have bad days. I still have many bad days, indeed. But the beat is unmistakable. And with the beat a call comes. It is a call for new things. It is a call for boldness. I have always wanted to break the boundaries that keep me safe inside an academic context. I have always wanted to share my learnings, but doubts have undermined my confidence. However, –after all this year- I have come to the conclusion that I have nothing to lose. I used to think in terms of “what if”. But now I am thinking in terms of “so what”.

Shall I dare to do what my heart desires?. I hope so . The vertigo that I experienced when I faced the possible lack of sense is becoming a new motivation (not sure how). And I know I have a few kind helpers up there... in the heaven... among the stars. 

DAY 365+129

when your heart aches for the world

This is one of the first books I read: The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde. I read a children´s version first, and the original text a bit later when, coincidentally, I found it in my father´s library. Years after, a quote of that book headed the first chapter of my PHD Thesis which was about educational planning and social development and my mother gave it to me as a gift.

I don´t know if I am a social-oriented person because that book conditioned my vision when I was just a child or -what I think is most probably- I love that book because I am prone to be concerned for the welfare and rights of others.

Actually, I don´t know exactly the reason why I behave (and feel) that way, although I guess that my childhood experiences have to do with it, but along the years I have learnt that this characteristic is not only an important part of my personality, but also a common characteristic among my students who choose to work in education and among many other persons.

This is what is called prosocial behavior, a voluntary behavior intended to benefit others often motivated by empathy. We human beings tend to be prosocial, indeed, the lack of prosocial behavior is described as a personality disorder, but as the levels of empathy are extremely changeable (even in the same person according to personal circumstances) the levels of prosociality are varied.

Once again, the capacity to recognize the state of another (empathy) is an evolutionary attribute of our species but is also related to one´s capacities. And the ability to give a response to that state depends on personal character.

As an introverted and very analytical person, I find easier to develop a cognitive empathy which is based in the understanding of another´s perspective and mental state rather than responding in an emotional way. I am prone to look for alternatives and to design solutions but deep inside me I am experiencing emotions that match what the other person is feeling.

Along the years my empathic concern has defined my professional career, influenced on many of my vital decisions and also has made me suffer and experience anger. Poverty, violence, abuse and also everyday indifference and carelessness move me to act but often cause also empathic distress, the sense of injustice and even guilt.

Why some persons have to suffer is something that I can´t explain to myself, but I am learning to accept it. Don´t get me wrong, I am not accepting individual facts related to suffering, I am accepting that existence involves an obvious suffering associated to the living process itself and mainly, to the anxiety of trying to hold onto things that are constantly changing. Therefore, I am trying to develop a realistic assessment of the human condition and embracing impermanence of all things. This is creating a sort of detachment that is softening my unease.

Is this being easy? No. Practice is endless.

Is this making me more passive and apathetic? No. I feel that compassion is perhaps increasing.

Is this making me justify social inequity and the pain of those who are vulnerable and invisible? No. This still makes me cry and shout.

Is this making me more serene? Absolutely, anger is decreasing.

I cannot explain you the truth of this feeling of peace, it has been a personal discovery, it´s simply my experience but now when I observe my past and observe me observing my past, sometimes I feel that this is the place I was destined to be. A place where I can reach a new perspective on life. A place where efforts make a new sense. A place where I can consider that regardless of the appearances, maybe we are - as a whole- in a paradoxical process of constant blooming.


Cross-posted at Vision and Verb on Friday. Many other women share their passion for creativity and words there, please visit us, it is a wonderful site 

There you will find also a Card Shoppe. For every greeting card sold, the profit will accrue in allotments of $25 each to be given as loans to men and women around the world who are starting their own businesses. We have chosen the non-profit organization KIVA as the conduit for our giving back 

You can send a love note to a friend and make a difference in the world

DAY 365+96

there is a happy medium 
between 

Pleasing others and selfishness

Extreme need of excellence and inefficiency

Rigidness about one´s beliefs and lack of opinion

Focusing on achievement and giving up one´s dreams and goals

Endless self-criticism and blindness

Constancy and lack of willpower

Tolerance to frustration and indolence

Impatience and apathy

Obsessive concerns and carelessness

Need of approval and arrogance

Improvement of oneself through self-knowledge and looking always outside

Self-demanding attitude and self-indulgence

Motivation and the loss of hope

...A happy medium where I can feel simply at ease

Indeed I have found it between the past and the future, between my mind and my heart, between earth and heaven

It is a place where nothing has to be repaired because nothing is defective, where one can take ownership of one´s own life without fear

DAY 365+90

"In humility is the greatest freedom.

As long as you have to defend the imaginary self
that you think is important, you lose your peace of heart.
As soon as you compare that shadow
with the shadows of other people, you lose all joy,
because you have begun to trade in unrealities
and there is no joy in things that do not exist."


Thomas Merton


Please follow this link to read my contribution to Vison and Verb past Sunday  

Many other women share their passion for creativity and words there, please visit us, it is a wonderful site

There you will find also a Card Shoppe. For every greeting card sold, the profit will accrue in allotments of $25 each to be given as loans to men and women around the world who are starting their own businesses. We have chosen the non-profit organization KIVA as the conduit for our giving back

You can send a love note to a friend and make a difference in the world

DAY 365+87

overcoming strangeness

This is my Photo-Heart Connection of June. I had not to think very much because the only photos I have taken along the whole month have been a series of these cherries 

The day after I finished checking the paper of my students and once I uploaded their marks, I took my camera. Only a few weeks had passed without taking a single photo, even so, it was like a foreign object in my hand that I didn´t know how to handle. I felt sad and tempted to let it aside, but I had the feeling that this could create a breach, a rupture

I´ve being doing my inner work for nearly two years using mainly my photos which often trigger musings that drive me to become aware of things about my life and myself, but in the moment that I thought to postpone my practice one day more, I could see how fragile still is (will always be). And also, how the discipline that is needed to go inside once and again, can be broken by pain or tiredness... by those days when one feels that any other effort -even on which is aimed at giving us peace and joy- is too much

So, although I was a bit reluctant I decided to take some photos. I was at home and I was too tired to go outside but I remembered the cherries that were in the fridge and I gave them a try

I started without much interest, and, to be honest, with a not very good attitude. In fact, I simply placed a bowl on top of a chopping board but after the first attempts I started to feel how my mood was changing. I moved the fruits here and there, and play with the settings of the camera and after sixty photos or so of the same subject (yes! you´ve read well, did I mention that I am a bit perfectionist?) calm was restored. And I felt the old bliss

This is the back story of this photo which is about frustration and reconnection. However, it has been a good thing to check out all the photos I took that day, because I have realized that quite often photos tell a story that don´t fit what happened when they were taken. In fact, this photo talks to me about summer, the expectation of lazy day, the chance to rethink daily life and create healthier routines, the need to start to enjoy little pleasures again, it talks to me about plans and changes to come

About intentions and leaps of faith

DAY 365+78

me and the birds

I went to the park the other day, still thinking about events of past week, trying to keep on slowing down my mind and recovering peace 


The afternoon was cloudy and the predicted rain seemed to be delayed, the park was lonely and quiet:

paths looked like no one had never ever walked through them,

trees were having sweet conversations by shaking their leaves,

bloomed flowers were trembling and rustling while opening their core to observers,

the wind was sighing subtlely and the world seemed to get around on tiptoe


But birds were flapping their wings, pecking about. They were twittering like there was not tomorrow:

defying silence

singing their joy

dancing their little dances

celebrating their tiny epiphanies

without paying attention to weather forecast, omitting past resentments


Life looks so perfect today, I said to myself. And then, I rectified and said, Life is perfect now, because indeed it was. And suddenly, this acknowledgement gained importance, made sense, and dealing with the hard stuff in my work seemed much easier to me


Life can be not that that perfect every day and we don´t have to feign such thing, we just have to stay with it a big longer every time. This is the training we need to appreciate the sweet moments that everydayness always brings and to be able to recognize (and enjoy!) the perfect days which come to meet us

If we persist in doing that, when those moments and days will arrive we ´ll not waste our time having regrets, longing for what we have had and we have lost or dreaming of the bright days to come, on the contrary:

we´ll be able to sing our joy,

dance our little dances

and celebrate our tiny epiphanies

DAY 365+72

budding calm

This is my April´s contribution to Photo-Heart Connection. I was almost sure that this photo would be my choice when I edited it a few weeks ago, and today, while I was looking over my files, I felt irreversibly attracted to it again

There is something about its composition that makes me think of my love for painting, which date back to my early childhood and has accompanied me since then. It reminds me the blissful amazement that I´ve experienced looking at the artwork of great impressionism masters, maybe because it captures the effect of light at a particular time of the day or maybe because the background shows what seems quick brushstrokes of color...

But there is also a story behind it:

Every single time I go to the park next to my house I visit the rose garden. Somehow, that is a tribute to my mother who has always wanted to have a garden (and has never accomplished her dream) and adores flowers, in particular roses, so I go there and take a few photos. Most of the times I don´t publish or even edit them, I simply keep them. In my mind I am creating a rose garden for my mother, but I still am not clear about how it is going to be materialized, so I continue taking photos, trying to let the hurry aside and enjoy this dream, the dream I have inherited from her

A month before this photo was taken, I went to the rose garden a I found it totally lopped off. The stalks were so short that I had the feeling that the little garden wouldn´t be the same ever again. The place looked sad, I felt totally disheartened and the critic that lives inside me started to say me that time was not by my side (my mom will be 89 next November) and also, that I had been little diligent in carrying out that project. That´s what the inner critic does, you know: makes the most of emotional vulnerability, and causes you to feel shame

I felt a bit annoyed, even when I have become aware long ago of the true nature of this project, which is not only about my mother´s dream, but also about my need to reconnect with earth with my story and to heal transgerational traumas

The day I took this photo, I was reluctant to go outside with the camera. I was tired and it was too late, but finally I decided to do it. I went to the park, thinking that I could only walk, and headed towards the rose garden which were beautifully illuminated by the last sun rays. To my surprise, it was in bloom. Big roses and little buds were sharing the same space; color and fragrance were awesome and beauty was reigning everywhere

I was thrilled. Life seemed to be promising again. I thought of the old dream of my mother and wondered if someday (some way or another) it could come true. I breathed the scented air and I realized that I was not so interested in the answer. I looked at the roses that were not there only a few weeks ago and thought that life is sweet, yet unpredictable. And I felt that maybe (only, maybe) I was ready to deal with this: with unattainable dreams and pending projects; with intangible goals and pruned aspirations; with lessening opportunities and unexpected gifts and miracles. With life, disenchantment and hope

Today, I breathe in and I feel how the garden is flowering inside me. My inner critic remains silent

DAY 365+66

come and sit here with me

I hadn´t remembered that April would bring the flowering of the beautiful jacaranda trees till I saw wonderful mauve carpets covering lanes and roads 

I´ve arrived to this seat while I was wandering with my camera, 
walking on layers and layers of aromatic flowers, 
trying not to step on them if not necessary
 
It´s the same bench I have seen so many times, yet different

This is a quiet and beautiful place, 
the smell is dense and sweet, 
the earth is still damp due to spring´s downpours 
and the fallen tree leafs of fichus gleam like gold 

The light still shines even when it´s late in the evening and the ivy goes across the soil sinuously

Come and sit here with me. There is a path. Where it will lead us, I am not sure
 
It´s luminous and goes through the scented flowers, the fertile land, the yellowish and withered vegetation and the growing plants 

It´s maybe my path, your path. The path wich goes through our gifts and talents, the territory of life, the compost made by joy and suffering, the fruitful seeds of love... and gets into the unknown territory of contentment

Inhale with me the rich (even voluptuous) air. Inhale with me the spring, the warm light of the end of the day, the patches of color, the smell of an evolving world 

And now exhale with me the pain and the anger, sadness and frustration which the subtle wind will dispel. Exhale with me the story, the past, the lies, the sense of not being enough

 Open your eyes, and you will see, like me, just a what reality offers. You will see, like me, just a little jacaranda flower beautifully illuminated by the latest sun rays

And you will realize, like me, that you simply are in the right place



Walk and Click Wednesday

DAY 365+52

it was a cold afternoon

the light was subtle and dense, 
it was drizzling and the misty atmosphere seemed not to be the best one to take photos


People was going back home very fast and the usual childish laughs and screams had been replaced for silence 


Even the birds were expectant what they were awaiting or anticipating, I don´t know 
but they were flying low and slowly 
and tossing their head 

...maybe because the park was almost empty and the bubbling hustle had been chased away because of the promise of the storm 


And there I was with my camera and the park at my complete disposal in all its glory 
...and I reveled in the solitude

in the first sprouts of spring

in the new, yet well known, friends

even in the magnificence of nature´s decay 

It was a fast walk, 
the wind was really freezing 
but along it I felt alive and present and joyful 


I rediscovered the magic of the camera which is creating a deep sense of connection,
a nexus between one´s own soul and the soul of the world


Walk and Click Wednesday

DAY 365+41

the peaceful mind

I wake up early, my backache is here again 

I remember that tomorrow I have to go to my stretching class and my thoughts fly  

I visualize my hectic schedule and all the new things I want to cram into my already busy days . Things I need to do, things I want to do 

I am still sitting down in my bed. Step by step, I say to myself

I pass through my corridor with the cats meowing behind me. I start to refill their bowls with fresh water and their feed 

While I am bending down, my backache reminds me that tomorrow I have to go to my stretching class and my thought follow the same course again

I wonder why I cannot divide my life into little, organized, compartments. Why I cannot be more efficient and why things seem to be so muddy

I go to the kitchen to prepare my first tea. I open the cupboard I am still lost in my thoughts when something catches my attention

It´s that precious tea sachet awaiting the boiling water and suddenly everything changes 

The loop of my mind stops

I hear the cats chewing, a distant trill  and the extraordinary silence between those ordinary sounds 

I smell the subtle fragrance of the bergamot in the earl grey tea and see the smart design of the white cup

And for a moment I see the life as it is, not as I would like it to be 

I inhabit what life is showing me

I see through the veil of my fantasies  and what I see (the cup, the sachet, the cats that are now cleaning their faces and even the striped rag) pleases me 

Concerns are not needed

Clarity prevails

My mind rests
 

... The kettle´s whistle and I am aware that I have been softly (miraculously) sent back to a space of intimacy with the present moment. While drinking my tea, I give thanks. And thankful I am

Simple things Sunday: morning finds