A decade of Whispers

Every big thing starts with a simple moment of folly in which, upon taking that leap, you ask “why not” and “what if”. Because yes, in jumping, you may fall; but what if you fly?

We have a tendency in this modern fast-paced world of ours to consider the downside more than what we have to gain. But we sometimes fail to see that if we don’t dare to try, we won’t move to grow. Change won’t happen if we don’t go after it.

In the past years of pandemic lockdowns, political developments, climate change (floods, heatwaves, fires), and so much more that has made us question the very essence of our existence, it is perhaps our mental health and psychological state of being that has been affected the most.

We find that we are often competing with our own self simply to remain sane. We’re battling the voices in our hear that we wish were not ours. We whisper that we’re fine, when inside we’re bellowing that we’re not. And we realise that we need days off everything; hours to do absolutely nothing – to lie in bed staring at the ceiling,binge-watch series or movies, to walk silently along the beach, to read after going offline. We ought to give ourselves those instances to regroup, to recharge, and to relax above all. It’s an opportunity to reconsider everything we do – from the support circle around us, the social acquaintances, our relations with the ‘outside’ world, to our employment prospects, our professional ambitions, but also our personal dreams which we so often push aside.

I began writing this blog a decade ago – can you believe it’s been 10 years already? It was my way of expressing everything I cannot (or wish not) say aloud. It’s not easy for everyone to speak out and converse so easily with people. Some of us are lost in the chaos of our minds. We’ll speak to those who win our trust, who we feel comfortable and secure with; to those, we will blabber away for hours, so consider yourself lucky, for you are among the selected few. But don’t think we don’t have things to say. The pen, it is said, is often mightier than the sword. And if we can’t speak, we’ll write it.

That said, consider this in the rapid passing of time: We come into each other’s lives in a mere fragment of it. We meet each other without knowing what led the other to this moment, and (on each occasion) we are trying to catch up on the time we ‘lost’ when we did not know of each other’s existence. In an effort to replenish that time, we want to draw in as much information as possible about the other, often being subject to jealousy of the people who have managed to spend a greater period with this new person.

We have but a glimpse of our lives to set our mark on another person and ensure our role and part in their lives is maintained. In the dozens (or more) of people we meet throughout our passage, only a handful will stay long enough to see us grow, change, laugh and cry, evolve. But those are the people who matter. And it goes both ways.

So, the message I’ll close off with in this 10-year anniversary post is this: sometimes it’s good not to know where you’re going and where something you start off in a leap of faith will lead. Because you never know how wonderful or life-changing it may be.

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Nine Whispering Lives

There is a saying that “success is falling down nine times and getting up ten”. Because in every fall, in every adversity, in every challenge, there is a lesson to be learnt. We grow up wiser (hopefully), stronger, more resilient, and more prepared for all that lies ahead.

The number nine holds a special symbolism.

Among others, it represents fulfillment, life mission, wisdom, and higher consciousness. It is said to symbolize transformation.

In the nine years of writing this blog, this is exactly what the past year has been all about. Changes, in every form and every level, lead you to rethink your course of life, your choices, the decisions you’ve (not) made, the way you view your existence in general. Finding inner peace and mental serenity means you need to acknowledge what is not working out. And in so doing, change it. It’s amazing how life improves when you develop a positive perspective for it. It is essentially true that when you smile at the world, it smiles right back. Well, not always; but at least for more times than none.

Birthdays – even if just for a blog – are a period of reflection of how time has passed, how things have altered, how you’ve progressed and evolved. One year is a lot and a little, depending on how you look at things. It is 365 days of starting over and hoping it will be a better day, and not giving up no matter the difficulties you’re facing. And that alone means you’re stronger every day. Because you survive. And you maintain that aspiration that things will get better. As long as we can keep that attitude, it’ll all be OK.

In all the tragedies we face, we witness, we experience, we need to remember to be extremely grateful for the lives we live, the comfort we enjoy, and that imperative feeling of safety. It can all be taken away by a simple spark that turns into a raging flame.

So let’s live this one life, as if it we’ve had nine.

Eight Whispers learnt

Picture the number eight (8). Now imagine it fell sideways (∞). That symbol is of infinity. It is one of no start or end.

Eight is a symbol of infinity. Of a constant flow of energy, life, love and power. It is also often related to material wealth, money and success.

In a world filled with complications and diversions, the infinity symbol represents both simplicity and balance, as it reminds us to be conscious of where we are and aware of the endless possibilities that we have before us.

Eight is a powerful and dynamic number in itself. It is exactly one third of the 24-hour day. It is the number of hours we work, play and sleep. But it is also the time when, having been out all day, you realise just how quickly time has passed because you were genuinely having fun.

Eight is the number of years that have passed since I started this blog.

Every blog anniversary I take the time to ponder on how far I’ve come as a writer and a person, how I’ve matured on all levels, and how things in life have changed not only for me personally, but also generally in the world.

This year has been tough so far. And we’re still in the eighth month of it, having another third to go.

Yet, if we consider everything we’ve learnt so far, we should be grateful.

So here are eight whispers that I share with you:

1. Everything – literally every single thing – can turn upside down in a millisecond. That is why you need to live and enjoy every moment you have. You don’t know how much more time we’ll be given. Why wait? The time is now. Do the best you can with it.
   
2. Smile more and laugh harder. The more you emanate a positive aura, the more happiness you’ll spread and the more positive your whole day will be. We attract what we send out. Remember that.
   
3. You don’t own all the problems in the world. There is always someone facing something more serious and more difficult than you do. Just work at having more skills to be able to manage and solve your own problems better.
   
4. Choose your friends and co-workers wisely. You’ll spend with them more than just eight hours or eight days or eight years. Be with people you admire and who push you to be better. Share a mutual path to success and improvement.
   
5. If you don’t take the risk you’ll never know. “A ship is always safe at the shore but that’s not what it’s built for” (Albert Einstein).
   
6. Focus on what you want and where you want to be. So focus on the good, on the positive, on the light in all the darkness. Place your energy in lighting up the way to where you want to go. That is what guides you. You.
   
7. Devote time to your education. A smart person never stops learning. Read. The more you read the more your mind and heart will open and the more you’ll see the world differently. The more you’ll appreciate it. And the more grateful you’ll be for all you have.
   
8. Being successful also entails being happy. Otherwise, there is not much point to it. Do what makes your heart sing. What gets you up in the morning without snoozing the alarm clock eight times. Make your job your passion and work hard to achieve your goals so that you radiate with satisfaction and happiness when you realise your dream.

Life shouldn’t be as miserable and harsh as we make it out to be. Every hardship we are forced to go through has a solution or at least an aspect we can deal with and learn from. We just need to want to see the positive in all the bad.

We should want to smile more and change our lives.

Eight is also said to represent order and balance and a constant desire to master all important things in life. But sometimes we just need to go with the flow and adapt to reach infinity.

Whisper it Seven

Seven is a special number. It is considered lucky because we have an affinity for it: most people consider seven their favourite number or choose it when asked to pick a number between one and ten.

Seven is prevalent in our daily lives too: seven days in a week, seven continents, seven oceans, seven vertebrae in the neck, seven colours in a rainbow, seven wonders of the ancient world, seven deadly sins. In fact, some researchers argue that human memory works best if it remembers up to seven items.

Seven also features strongly in the religions of the world: in the creation story of the Bible, God made the world in six days and rested on the seven, thus scholars believe it represents perfection or completeness. In Judaism, there are seven heavens. In the Islam’s holy book, the Koran, Muslims making the pilgrimage to Mecca walk around the Kaaba seven times. In Chinese culture, seven represents Yin and Yang combined with the Five Elements (water, fire, earth, wood and metal), while in Confucianism this combination is believed to represent harmony.

Seven is, therefore, an important number and most often a lucky one.

Seven years pass by in a flash.

I have written a lot during these seven years (794 posts on this blog) and a lot has happened. It is enough time to reflect, to grow, to mature, to experience new things, to change the way you react to situations, to learn how to deal with life especially when things don’t come the way you plan or hoped they would. It is time that allows you to become stronger and more resilient. And one way of doing this – for me – is through writing, right here. By making my own experiences and observations into fictional stories. By writing motivational stories that I would really like someone else to tell me. By drawing optimism and positivity from the words that fill a page on a screen.

Seven years may be many or few, depending on how you look at it. But they are part of what makes us who we are and a chance to reflect on where we are, according to where we want to be.

So here’s to many more, with the wish to never run dry of inspiration and creativity!

The things that matter

@MCD

The day she met him she had found a penny on the way to the store outside of which they were to bump into each other. She thought it was good luck and gave it to him for their three-month anniversary. She told him it might be silly, but she enjoyed looking out for all the small details that for her made a difference. She kept souvenirs and memories of their outings, even dried-up flowers he gave her, in a small box in her nightstand. She felt they granted a special energy to their relationship and strengthened their bond.

He didn’t really pay attention to the penny and it got lost. Or he might have even spent it somewhere; he didn’t remember. He wasn’t the type of person that gave attention to material goods. He felt people and the time spent with them were more important. He tried to offer her as much of his free time as he could. And he tried to please her as much as possible.

But something always seemed to go wrong.

On the day they moved-in together, she found a penny outside his door gate. She gave it to him as a token that it would bring them luck in their new endeavor and in sharing their lives. She found it a few days later still on the TV table where he had left it. She smiled, thinking that he valued it too much to spend or lose. But a few days later, the penny disappeared. And so did her optimism.

He wasn’t too much of an organiser, often leaving things lying around the house for days, even scattered between tables and drawers. He complained lack of time was the perpetrator. And he could not understand why she made such a fuss over insignificant stuff.

She felt he didn’t care enough to cherish the things she brought him.

He felt she was becoming too quirky, too hard to satisfy.

She was about to leave in tears, when he walked into the bedroom, opened the top closet door and brought down a rectangular silver frame. He handed it to her and said, “I pay attention to the things that matter; and that means having you. That’s all I need. That’s all I want”.

He had framed the note where she first wrote to him that she loved him.  She had given it to him the night of the day she gave him that first penny.

Every story has two sides, you just have to have a mind that is open enough to see them both.

That morning chime

The first day they met she had been woken up by the sweetest chime she had heard. And just outside her window, sat a blue-necked sparrow, as if waiting for her to lift her hand so it could chirp its way right on to it.

She was a farm girl and proud of it. She found comfort among her four-legged farm-mates and was extremely content with simply roaming across the fields, either on horseback, in the mini-truck, or on foot. There was always one animal or other running alongside her and she felt that they could completely understand what she was saying or even feeling. She had yet to feel that with a human.

Until that very day.

It is strange how life throws things at you, just when you’re ready to accept them. Even if you don’t realise that at the time. Because that very morning, she thought nothing of the sparrow’s visit. It was only after weeks, that her mind recalled the symbolism.

That morning she rushed to catch the train to the nearby city. She was tasked with obtaining supplies ahead of the long weekend. Her stalling to admire the little bird, however, meant she lost the early train, which she was supposed to have travelled with. So she took the next one.

He was on that one.

He sat opposite her, mesmerized by the innocence radiating from her eyes.

But she paid no attention. She was still thinking of the sparrow, while staring out of the window at the morning dew.

He coughed, dropped his phone by accident and they bumped heads as they both moved to pick it up. That was all it took to get her talking. Her laughter resounded in his ears for days later. And she was enthralled by how alike they were. He was the son of the neighbouring landowner. They had the second largest estate in the town and she found paradise in his property and in his heart.

The sparrow never returned. At least not until today.

It had played its role. Now it was their turn to keep things moving. A little effort is all it really takes.

The elephant in the closet

When it was just a young calf, the little elephant was adopted by a rich high-class, very well-off family for no other reason because they could do so, and because their toddler son had become fascinated by the picture of the animal in a book he had, that he simply had to have one for his own. Most of the first few weeks were spent with the toddler running after the little elephant, tugging at its trunk and rejoicing whenever it squirt water back at it in an unsuccessful attempt to get the kid to stop.

As time passed by, the toddler grew older and found other interests. The elephant wasn’t the biggest fascination of his life anymore, but he did often still play with him. One rainy day, he had the idea of playing hide and seek. With the elephant. The elephant was to go hide.

The boy counted to 100, got distracted at 49, wondered off for half an hour, returned to count from one again and, well, two hours later he went to seek the elephant.

By now, the elephant was almost full-grown. So, really, where could an elephant hide? Mind you, the boy lived in a mansion, so it was quite easy to get lost in there. Or, in the boy’s case, get tired. After around half an hour of searching, the boy gave up and was then called for dinner. His mind drifted to other things and he soon went to bed.

The elephant had hidden in the basement closet.

They say elephants never forget. But people do. The boy forgot about the elephant and it was literally months before he remembered that he once had such a “pet”. But he never reached the closet. Because of laziness, of over-privilege, of low-concentration capacity? There were many reasons. Reasons that the elephant could not understand. For in its miserable, unnatural life, it was locked up, voluntarily at first and forcefully later as the closet door could not open from the inside.

The elephant perished in the closet of one of the most lavish houses people could ever build. But he became witness to the truth that appearances are deceitful. Because no matter the grandness of the house, the hearts of the people who occupied it were nonexistent.

Elephants never forget. But some people don’t even remember.

A Journalist by any other name…

The other day, as I was blissfully walking across one of the city’s busiest shopping streets (no, I had not bought anything, strangely enough, and yes that does happen), I had an interesting encounter.

A young man was trying to promote a beauty salon and caught my attention with a joke. He asked me what I do. When I responded that (among others) I am a journalist, he frowned and said “well, I can understand the rest, but that, I am not so thrilled about”.

It got me thinking. Why do journalists have such a bad name? And since when? I grew up believing it was so cool to be a journalist, a reporter roaming the streets, cities and countries in search of news, and always being the first to find out exciting information.  It was an ideal job.

But now? Now, journalists are one of the most underpaid and overworked professions there are, with citizen journalists trying to steal the show, and all these social media attempting to take over traditional forms of information.

Journalists have gained a bad name. Why? Because there are so many bad ‘journalists’ out there, that it makes the rest (of us) look bad too.

Everyone suddenly thinks they can be a writer, a journalist, a reporter. Because it is easy to just sit and write whatever comes to mind. But not everyone can express this adequately. And this is something few realize. A journalist is more than a writer and a storyteller. It is a person who searches after news, who can sense what is newsworthy, worthy of reporting; who can understand what the public is concerned about, and who can express it in such a way that every citizen/reader can understand what it is s/he is saying. It is about being concise, comprehensive and to the point. It is about being able to challenge the status quo when necessary, prompt change, and above all make the reader think.

In today’s digital and socially interconnected world, real journalism has lost its meaning. Instead it has become what Frank Zappa called “rock journalism” and most of it “is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read”. And media today have become associated with this bad journalism.

Trying to stand out of the crowd in this storm isn’t easy. But they say that s/he who perseveres wins, and what is more, there is always the faith that a good journalist will never get lost. At least in a world where people still strive for perfection, quality journalism will remain a necessity always searched for…

Also part of NaBloPoMo (November 2013)

Also part of Daily Prompt: Teach Your (Bloggers) Well

Bear-ing a dream

“Nanna, I had a weird dream last night.”

“Really? What did you see?”

“I saw a big brown bear. It seemed so alive!”

“A bear?” Nanna seemed surprised. And perplexed. “Was it growling?”

“Hmm, I don’t remember. But I don’t think so. Why, does it mean something different if it was?”

“No. I was simply wondering if there were any audio effects to it,” she smiled cheekily.

“Nanna! I’m serious! It scared me. What does it mean? And why did I see a bear in my sleep? So real and scary?”

“Well, my sweet Rita, you can’t expect others to interpret the messages sent by your subconscious. No matter what all these dream books and so-called-dream-experts say, you will only find the true meaning of your dreams if you search inside you. And well, you never know when you’ll realize what it means. Maybe it’s when you least expect it. Like a revelation!”

Rita seemed confused. What did the dream mean? Lost in her thoughts she was startled by Puffy, the golden retriever who came over to announce it was time for his walk. He jumped on to the chair next to her and knocked off a bunch of clothes and bags piled up there, including Rita’s favourite brown teddy bear which popped out from under a t-shirt as it fell on the floor. That very bear she had been looking for all week.

Rita smiled and looked at Nanna whose wisdom eyes gleamed in the morning sunlight. The subconscious is a funny thing after all.

 

Also part of Daily Prompt: Freudian Flips

Life in colour

Have you ever thought why when you’re sad you’re feeling blue, or when you’re jealous you turn green with envy?  And why is love painted red? Why is it that every time our emotions change, we become chameleons changing colours?

Colours are often associated with emotions, because, obviously, our world is not black and white. We see colours all around us, and these constitute an important aspect of our visual experience. Colours are not only detected by the eye, but by the brain and can thus affect various systems of the body. Dubbed as colour psychology, research has shown that we indeed associate various colours and the emotion they cause with the relevant physiological or psychological state of a person. For example, blue is perhaps the world’s favourite colour. Seen all around us in the sky and sea, blue symbolises openness, while it also soothes, calms and relaxes. Blue is also intrinsically linked to low blood pressure due to the deoxygenised colour of the veins and for this reason it is very often linked to sadness and depression. Contrary, red is the colour of passion. Associated with high blood pressure and heat, red is linked to vitality, ambition, and anger. It is actually linked to all emotions that cause your heart to race and stimulate an increase in adrenaline. In its lighter shade, pink is the colour of related to feminism, comfort, warmth and tender affection.

When you think of green what comes to mind? The environment, plants, recycling, eco-friendly activities. A calmness perhaps and a serene environment. Green creates feelings of comfort, laziness and relaxation; however, dark olive green is associated with illness – and thus we often see ill-stricken cartoon characters turning green. Yet, green also describes envy. In fact the Ancient Greeks believed that jealousy was accompanied by an overproduction of bile, lending a yellowish-green pallor to the victim’s complexion. In the seventh century B.C., the poetess Sappho used the word “green” to describe the face of a stricken lover. After that, the word was used freely by other poets to denote jealousy or envy. The most famous such reference and the origin of the term “green-eyed monster” is Iago’s speech in Shakespeare’s Othello.

Other colours are intrinsically linked to the physiological state the emotion incurs, explaining for example why we turn white with fear due to the presence of all colours causing a rush of emotions, or why white symbolises purity and peace. Yet, colours such as yellow although on the one hand are reminiscent of sunshine and cheerfulness, on the other also symbolise cowardice and fear, probably because it causes more eye fatigue than any other colour!

Did you know that orange is lonely? Literally lonely? Because nothing actually rhymes with orange! Yet the colour itself is psychologically warm, welcoming and vital. Purple is majestic in its own right, while it is also associated with combating shock and fear. Having been used in the care of nervous disorders, this colour has shown to help balance the mind and transform obsessions and fears. Additionally purple is also linked to the right side of the brain stimulating intuition and imagination. Brown, an earthly colour reminds us of home. It arouses feelings of stability and security, as well as credibility and reassurance. Black on the other hand, entails a negative feeling, often of loss, void, emptiness, insecurity and mystery, given that this is caused by the absence of colour.  So there seems to be a colour for every mood, every emotion, every physiological and psychological state. Even for the indecisive and ambiguous, there is grey, for it is neither white nor black!

Colours are our way of experiencing the world. It is why “adding colour to your life” has become such an important expression. Because in order to experience life in its fullest we ought to live out its every colour and every emotion that comes along with it!