Vintage talk

©MCD

“What’s this?” a little girl with chestnut pigtails inquisitively asked as her gaze fell eye level on a small table with an antique phone displayed on it.

“Well, that is a telephone,” her grandmother explained. “It is what we used to call each other at home before we had mobile phones.”

The young one looked perplexed.

“How?” she asked.

“You would pick up the receiver, place it by your ear and mouth, and then dial the number you wanted to call by using this,” the older woman demonstrated.

The little girl seemed amazed.

“Back then, when you didn’t want to speak to someone, you just told someone else to say you weren’t home. Now, with these phones constantly strapped to our hands, the first thing anyone asks when they call is not if you’re OK, but rather ‘where are you’?”, the woman ranted on a bit.

“Life was simpler then. And quieter too”.

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Breaking the silence

©MCD

“What’s wrong?” Miguel asked as he wrapped his arm around her.

He knew sunsets were her favourite hour. That golden moment when nature seemed at peace, and you could feel serene.

“Nothing”, Adeline feigned.

He read through her reflex reaction that everything was not as fine as she claimed. Her eyes weren’t as shiny as when she really meant that. Other times, he could see the last of the sun’s rays reflect off her glistening emerald pupils. And her smile was genuine. Now she just seemed tired. Or, rather, exhausted. Emotionally.

He perplexed his mind for a minute, wondering whether it was worth asking again, pushing for a different answer.

What he couldn’t tell was that she was restraining herself from saying everything that caused chaos in her head.

She couldn’t figure out how it was all roses one minute, and in a single second, due to a single phrase, everything was upturned.  She was upset not only with the way he behaved towards other females – in her presence even – but most of all by the fact that he could hardly identify the problem.

People want to feel they are exclusively loved and valued. Much more so when they’re in a relationship. They want the security that their partner places them above all others, regardless of history or social connections. And it goes both ways. Every kind of relationship needs compromise and concessions. From both. Otherwise the balance doesn’t work.

By the time she decided to say something, the ferry boat had reached the port. And now the time was unsuitable.

He continued as if nothing happened.

But for her it was not as easy.

Silence is hard to keep. But when you break it, you need to be certain that what you’ll say is more important.

Get out of your head

“The reason we trouble ourselves is because we prioritise one thought over another. And that former one is usually a source of negativity and hypothetical scenarios that may never even play out. We need to get out of our heads and live in the moment. To appreciate what we truly have now, we need to stop dwelling on the ‘ifs’”.

She looked at him silent.

He was right. But she was too stubborn to admit it.

He gazed into her eyes transmitting a calmness that radiated from the depths of his soul. Even his breathing held a tranquil rhythm. She could feel the serenity soothing her. How could she remain angry at him? And for no apparent reason.

“There are so many problems in the world. Serious ones. We don’t need to create more with our minds”, he said opening up his arms to embrace her in a forget-it-all-and-let-it-go hug.

Still she said nothing.

But she smiled, and her eyes lit up.

She loved him for this. For being able to comprehend her mood swings and loving her regardless.

Communicate it

In all we want to say but never do, in the things we say but don’t even mean, in the words lost for the emotions we don’t express, there is so much communication that fades between us.

Not everyone has the same way of externalising what they feel, think or even want to say.

But surely there must be a way of sending your message out to others.

Be it by humour – no matter how cold or inappropriate; body language, drawings, lyrics, or any other way, being able to express yourself is an integral necessity of our human nature, and ultimately our survival.

Because if we cannot even understand each other, how can we help each other become the better versions we are capable of?

As dawn breaks

©Dale Rogerson

As dawn breaks beyond the spire, overwhelming the horizon with a mesmerizing honeycomb illusion, my thoughts wander towards you.

What would I give for you to be here, right next to me.

How many minutes would I spend speaking to your eyes without saying a word.

How many things we would experience together.

How many choices could we have made differently; but what if this was the right time to meet, and never before?

What if there is a reason life made our paths cross now?

As the sun rises, how many silences are filled with our kissing breaths intertwined…

Also part of Friday Fictioneers

Complications

Call it ‘complications’, ‘technical difficulties’, ‘unsurpassable obstacles’. For anyone in communications, it’s the simplest way of not naming a problem: just give it a vague definition.

We tend to do this with life itself. Things come our way that we do not really know how to handle or deal with – at least not at first. We find ourselves drowning in our sea of problems, of stomach-churning troubles, of migraine-inciting predicaments, we have no idea of how to solve.

Yet if we calm down just a bit; if we talk to someone just to get a clearer view, we realise that there are no real complications. In fact, we ourselves are causing the complexity to begin with.

There are only two ways to move ahead in life: you either want to or you don’t.

And the best method to decide is to listen to yourself – those body signs you often ignore: if it doesn’t feel right, it’s probably not. But if you’re thinking about it so much, it probably means it also matters enough for you to go forward with it.

Whatever you do, remember this: it may be better to live with remorse than regrets, but things are just as simple as our minds allow them to be.

Everything starts and ends with a healthy mind, a healthy attitude, and a healthy mentality.

Off the grid

When your phone isn’t working due to lack of network signal or any other technical problem, what is the first thought that rushes to your head? That you’re blocked out from the world and are isolated, unaware of what is going on out there? Or that you can finally get off the radar and enjoy some peace and quiet without the annoying buzz of notifications and messages that your OCD does not allow you to leave unanswered?

Like everything, there are two sides to every issue. One is that it’s actually liberating to sometimes know nothing. In many cases, ignorance is indeed bliss. Because what you don’t know, won’t trouble or affect you. But on the other hand, we need that constant communication with others. We want to know that our loved ones near or far are OK, and we feel we ought to be reachable in case of any emergency that may arise. Because we too would want to find someone in case we were in need.

Being out of range for a few hours every so often, though, actually helps as recharge, in many ways. It makes us realise how dependent we are on our devices, and how much we’ve lost touch with the small joys of life, including – and perhaps most importantly – our own mental health and tranquillity.

The Ancient Greeks had a saying, “everything in good measure”, or rather the need for moderation in all things – from consumption, to technology, to food, to overthinking. If we could control all that, we would definitely be able to regain some of our sanity.

Simple is not necessarily boring

If it was simple, it would be boring. Isn’t that what you keep telling yourself when even the slightest of things appear to be too complicated to resolve?

People lack communication skills at all levels. From the lowest point – informing of when and how condominium utility fees get collected and paid – to general instructions as to how we can all survive by facilitating each other’s existence.

There are times when it all seems so hard that you envy those who literally do not care at all about anything, let alone the other’s wellbeing. Selfish people are often insensitive too, but to the rest of us who suffer so deeply because we allow everything to seep inside and affect us, these are the people who are also most carefree, even happy.

It’s not that we should all become insensitive and egoistic – because where would that really lead to? – but rather, why don’t we try to improve the society and world we all share? Why is it so much easier to make everything worse by only looking through your own lens instead of agreeing to collectively make life better for everyone?

Generation Gaps

“You know, when we were young, our only way of communicating with each other was if we were both home and both had a landline. Otherwise we were sort of lost in our own worlds”.

The young girl looked up from her mobile phone.

She was astounded by the truth of her grandfather’s words. She lived in an age where you could communicate with anyone anywhere in a matter of seconds. She didn’t know what it was like to not have a phone in hand and for her it was unthinkable to not be able to find out at any given time where anyone was and what they were doing. Mostly because her generation voluntary gave out that information online.

“So what happened if you wanted to find out about someone but didn’t want them to know?” she asked coyly.

“Well, you would have to ask someone who knew them too”.

“But what if you didn’t want anyone to know?”

“Like stalking?” her grandfather put it frankly.

“Well, sort of…” she blushed.

“There was no such thing in my time. If you’re relationship broke with someone, you tried to fix it. And if that didn’t work then you just got out of touch with them. And that was the end of it”.

The girl said nothing. She looked at her grandfather trying to imagine what that was like. Her generation was used to stalking each other on social media and getting obsessed with each other’s posts, overanalyzing, overthinking and overstressing. Everything in exaggeration. What was it like to not have to think about all this? To simply not care? To be calm?

Her grandfather was almost 100. He would still go out for long walks and had the patience of a mule.

She was agitated by even a fly’s buzz.

One time she had asked him if he never worries about anything. His reply was: “would it help?”

“To be calm is the highest achievement of the self” – Zen proverb

Social relationships under self-isolation

It’s interesting to witness how a state-imposed self-isolation affects our social relationships. Funny memes are going viral in that, during just the first few days of quarantine due to coronavirus (COVID-19), people are rediscovering their homes and the people in them.

If we choose to remain optimistic and see the positive in every situation – even this one – we may realise that this is an opportunity to take a pause and allow the world itself to breathe. By staying home, the decrease of environmental and atmospheric pollution is already evident. But there is more to that: we can take a break from the routine we keep complaining about and rediscover ourselves and the people around us. We live in a world where we can communicate with everyone / anyone anywhere at the click of a button, we can work from home, view films and series, tour museums online, read books, go online for shopping. There are so many things available at our fingertips.

It is during this time that we acknowledge how important it is to have people around us who we can communicate with even if only via a digital chat. People who can keep us strong and positive, and with whom we can exchange useless information simply to keep each other distracted and busy enough to forget to despair that we are “stranded” at home.

Some of us are actually “stranded” in another country away from our families. And due to the closing of borders as tight precautionary measures we will have to wait for a few months it seems to be able to hold them again. Because via videochat we can see each other every day and check-up on each other.

This is the time to realise that we can never tell what the future holds. Even if we plan things, they may not turn out the way we hope.

Most of all, we are given a chance to acknowledge all the things we take for granted and don’t appreciate. First of all our health and the time we have with our loved ones.

Let’s seize this opportunity to stay home, stay strong, stay safe, and keep our families and friends safe too.

Nothing lasts forever. Not even this.