Snowed in

© MCD

There is something truly wondrous about waking up to snow. Pulling the curtain and opening your window to find everything covered in white outside. Regardless if it is literally freezing cold. At that moment, you just don’t care. Because it’s magical and you want to draw it all in.

It becomes even better when you get snowed in. It’s not your fault. You can’t control weather conditions. But you can enjoy them to the fullest. Because there is nowhere really you can go, other than outside on that white carpet to play. To forget for a while all the things that bother you, your troubles and worries, your stress and concerns, and just…play. Build a snowman, start a snowball fight, lay in the snow. Become a child again.

Perhaps that’s where the real magic of the season lies: in allowing yourself to act like a child; to view the world with wonder and excitement and let your mind be free. To have faith that everything will work out exactly as it should and be positive that the happiness will last.

So, go, go outside and live every moment of the present. Let yourself indulge in all the small things that make life so great and be joyous. Trust that everything will be all right. And wish that the next year that is waiting around the corner will be even more superb!

 

Also part of Daily Prompt: Renewal

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The Christmas bell

Denis was a child who grew up with stories and fairy tales of fantasy worlds that had no association with reality. He was a child who enjoyed the fiction, yet as an adult became too rational to endure the magic that they entailed.

Denis, however, loved Christmas. The sparkles, the lights, the optimism and joy of the season. But he never liked the fact that his birthday happened to be on the exact same day. It made him feel wanting, as though he lacked something everyone else had – a day for himself.

It was only when he met Nancy that his view changed.  She was a girl who worked in a toy store. They had met by chance at a coffee shop one day, when she was in such a haste that she nearly spilled her coffee on him. As karma has it, one talk let to another and soon they were dating. The good things always happen when you least expect them to.

Nancy loved the winter holiday season too. She dressed up as an elf for almost an entire month for her job and experienced it all so intensely. She was the kind of person who believed that fairy tales do come true if we believe in them. She was convinced that Denis was one of the luckiest people to have the privilege to have a birthday on such an important date. He just had to see it too.

She gave him a small golden bell as a present. She told him it was similar to those on Santa’s reindeers. He shook it but no sound came out. Nancy took it from his hand, shook it a little and said, “can’t you hear its sweet chime?” Denis heard nothing.  She got up and wrapped him in her arms. The snow was falling gently outside, and wood was crackling in the fireplace. “This is all magic what we’re living,” Nancy said with a huge smile. She tossed the tail of her Santa hat from in front of her face and added, “magic happens when you don’t give up. You just have to believe. Believe that things happen as they’re supposed to; there’s a reason for it all. And you are lucky to be who you are, at this very moment, at this very place.” She winked and Denis glowed. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and tried again. He shook the bell gently and all of a sudden, a harmonious sound echoed in the room.  He could hear it now too.

The wrong turn

Elaine knew it the moment she stepped in the door. It was the wrong turn. The wrong decision she had taken. A bad choice. But she had now crossed into it and there was nothing she could do to change it. She just had to survive not being perfect for once.

All her life she was raised to live up to other people’s expectations. And more. She was the one who had to know how to dress right, to behave properly, to be kind and courteous no matter the person or the occasion.

But today, she had chosen unwisely. She chose to go against her instinct and it turned out to be wrong. But she had to experience this too. It would be the only way she would go stronger and wiser for the next time she encountered a similar dilemma.

We often take the wrong turn so that we are more certain when the choice comes in the future to take the right one instead.

In anticipation

With Christmas just a week away, and the New Year a few days to go, we all seem to have something to be waiting for. (I have something more due to my birthday too next week). The lights in the street and the brightly lit houses, the decorations, the fancy atmosphere…they all emit a feeling that something wonderful is about to happen. So we wait…we wait and anticipate that in that one or two days that we celebrate, we will be recompensed for all the hardship the year has brought.

We wait and expect that suddenly this wonderful time of the year will lighten our mood and brighten our lives. Because in essence we need to believe that things will turn out as brightly as the decorations we load upon our houses. We need the optimism of the season in order to survive.

But we spend almost an entire month, if not more, counting down in anticipation of literally just one day that will pass by quicker than we’ll realise. We wait, sometimes forgetting that life is composed of “nows”, those everyday moments that make up our memories. Those experiences that we share with loved ones, which forge who we are and who we want to become.

It is said that good things are worth waiting for, but also that good things don’t last long. The truth is, we also need to try; to put in the effort so that those good things come along a little bit faster and last a bit longer.

In the end, life is what we make of it. And it is how we chose to see it and experience it.

Three lives

“All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.” Gabriel Garcia Marquez believed that we create who we are by what we share. For example, the public life is that which any ordinary person can see of you; the private life is that open only to close friends, loved ones and family, or to someone who is willing to investigate and discover it; and the secret life is that that which is kept only to oneself (and sometimes even from oneself!).

Our personality is formed according to the experiences we have, the relationships we create, and the things we share with others. Perhaps in this digital age, it becomes harder to have a private or secret life, but we all have things we only disclose to those closest to ones, and thoughts that we only keep to ourselves.

The things we let out are what makes us who we are. But it is also those things we don’t say, that influence who we become. It takes strength and courage to let people into your life, let alone your mind and heart. And it is only with time that you manage to discern who those truly worth it really are.

What we need to remember though, is that in the end, we only have one life to live. So let’s make the most of it.

Do something more

©Lucy Fridkin

“Do something every day that scares you”. Her grandmother’s prompt echoed in her ears every time she felt her heart grow sore with exhaustion. She needed a change. Routine was turning out to be lethal after all.

She woke up determined to take that extra step. So that day she went to the café with a view to the port.

It was cloudy, but ships were sailing.

She had time if she really wanted to do it.

She connected to the Wi-Fi and loaded the website. Tickets were booked in less than a minute.

She would finally go to him.

 

Also part of Friday Fictioneers

Don’t sing too often

In these contemporary times, where everything is public and in plain sight, there is the prevailing sentiment that everyone wants what’s best for you, as long as it’s not better than what they have. Jealousy is a nasty thing. Envy is even worse.

According to the ancient Greek poet Callimachus, “jealousy is the daughter of self-love and inseparable sister of envy and malice.”

Jealous people are often insecure, feeling inferior towards others, or desiring something that the other has. But jealousy is a negative emotion, transmitting a gloomy aura.

Paulo Coelho says “never hate jealous people. They are jealous because they think you are better than them”. The simple knowledge of this fact should suffice.

But there is something more.

Sometimes we are the ones who provoke this so-called “evil eye”, because we so want to share our good fortune, our happiness and optimism with others. In the era of social networking and continuous (digital) exposure, however, this isn’t exactly the best option.

There is a relevant story on precisely this: once upon a time, there was this little sparrow, who while flying south for the winter froze solid and fell to the ground. And then to make matters worse the cow crapped on him, but the manure was all warm and it defrosted him. So there he is, he’s warm and he’s happy to be alive and he starts to sing. A hungry cat comes along and he clears off the manure and he looks at the little bird and then he eats him. And the moral of the story is this: everyone who craps on you is not necessarily your enemy, and everyone who gets you out of crap is not necessarily your friend, and if you’re warm and happy no matter where you are you should just keep your big mouth shut.

There are some people who draw misery out of the happiness of others. There are those who instead of turning jealousy into a productive impulse to become better themselves, convert it into envy and attempt to darken the lives of others. So perhaps let us rather see how we can make our own souls brighter, stirring from within us the change and improvement we seek, and let’s try to envy others less, as they may be managing to do exactly what we hesitate to act upon.

The biscuit thief

He was pint-sized and looked much younger than he really was. But that actually helped him because no one really took him for a thief.

Simon was a strange type of burglar. He would sneak into kitchens – be it of houses or of shops – and steal biscuits. Freshly-cooked-still-hot-deliciously-smelling-so-tasty cookies were his favourite.

He couldn’t help it. As soon as he sensed even the slightest smell of just-baked biscuits he had to go in. And he took a whole bunch of them with him. Simon had a sweet tooth. But he also had a compulsive urge to steal cookies. He didn’t eat them all at once. Some he even shared with other people – family, friends, even with people on the street.

In his neighbourhood, people began to search for the biscuit thief; then his activity spread throughout the city, and the news was even broadcast on TV.

But Simon was not obstructed. He continued unhindered, and un-caught. This was his thing. To find freshly made cookies and steal them to enjoy on his own time.

One day, however, he ran into the chef just at the time when he was sneaking out of a patisserie kitchen with a bag of biscuits in his hand. Both froze on the spot and stared at each other, the chef’s eyes rolling from Simon’s eyes to the bag in his hand.

“So you’re the infamous biscuit thief?” the chef finally said in a French accent.

Simon gulped. Could he go to jail for stealing biscuits?

The chef had a better proposition, though. He offered Simon the position of official biscuit-taster in the patisserie. Soon, the shop elevated to becoming the city’s best biscuit-maker and was renowned throughout the country.

Sometimes things do happen for a reason; and even if the initial reason is unclear, life has a strange way of working itself out.