A sudden hiatus

I’ve been away for a while, unexpectedly and involuntarily. The reason is that I was in a hospital for two weeks, the majority of which were in an intensive care unit (ICU). Such an experience changes your entire life perspective – inadvertently or not. You are forced to see things differently because you came close to never seeing anything at all. And that clearly affects you.

Getting to the point where you need to be placed in an ICU, sedated and intubated, means that you are in a very grave – life-threatening – condition. When you’re sick, you never believe it’s ever that serious. But sometimes, life never happens as you wish or plan. Even if it’s a one-in-a-million chance of happening, sometimes it happens to you and you’re left wondering why. But that’s not really what’s important. Priorities change after this. Significance gains a new meaning. What’s truly important is surpassing it all, getting back up and recovering as best as possible.

A week in the ICU makes you view the world differently. It forces you to find ways to communicate even when you can’t speak – to innovate in getting your need across despite the tens of things you want to say. You learn to pay attention to the little things – the taste of water, the feeling of fresh linen, the sensation of cleanliness, the refreshing feeling of a bath, the touch of a loved one, the sounds and smells of life. Everything somehow feels different. You learn to appreciate the caretakers who fuss over you; their kindness and attention even when you’re not in a state to understand much. You can feel the people around you. You can sense the love, concern, and presence of all those who care and are in a state of frenzy when you appear to be sleeping. And you’re grateful for it. But most of all you learn that nothing – absolutely nothing – in this world is more important or more urgent than your health and well-being. If you collapse, nothing else matters.

The whole adventure teaches you to become more resilient, to have more patience as recovery demands time; to take things slow even if you don’t want to and are discouraged by the pace of progress. But it also makes you accept the things you cannot control and deal with the situation at hand. Whatever happened, happened. Now, there is a need to overcome it all; to slowly and steadily get back up, to heal.

Sometimes we’re dealt a hand we never expected. Perhaps it’s to understand that we’re stronger than we think. To reduce the pace we’ve been overwhelming ourselves with. Or simply perhaps to alter our entire mentality for the better.

Runners are the happiest

Do you run? You’ll probably ask back: why would you? But, unless you’re of the mentality that you just get up and run – in the parks, on the streets, even on that treadmill at the gym – you’re likely never to see what runners see in this habit.

Apart from the hormonal explanations that running – and exercise in general – releases endorphins that bring a feeling of euphoria and avert depression, there is more to it. Research has actually shown that running regularly makes people happier, as well as having a positive impact on their mental health and body image. The sense of achievement also serves as a motivation boost, filling them with confidence and thus also positively affecting their social relations.

But why do people run? Well, for many reasons: because it’s free; it’s a form of exercise that can be done literally anywhere; you don’t need any prior preparation for it nor any special equipment; you get to explore places while exercising; you can form part of communities that share a passion in this way; and perhaps most importantly, because when you run, you can clear your mind and get your thoughts in order. In fact, once you start running long, you find that it’s just you and your mind – you reach a point where you’re battling your own head to find the strength to keep going even when your body wants to give up and your brain wants to consent to it. You thus find ways to encourage your own self. And once you manage to do that, you’ve just gained a skill you can use in every aspect of your life.

Running changes your body and your mind.

And let’s face it: it’s not easy to discipline yourself to wake up at the break of dawn to voluntarily subject yourself to this strenuous exercise: to run simply for the sake of it.

But in the end, that sense of satisfaction of having accomplished something no matter how perplexed everything else is in your life or around you, is what ultimately helps you continue.

Runners (and dancers) are the happiest. Because they have found ways to exercise both body and mind and view the world a bit differently.

There are days

©MCD

There are days you hit the snooze button on the alarm and wake up an hour later, lost as to how that happened.

There are days when you have no desire to do absolutely anything that you ought to.

There are days you simply want to get lost – body and mind – and do absolutely nothing, because that too rejuvenates you.

There are days when you are caught in an endless loop of thoughts – of ‘what ifs’ and ‘if so’ and ‘why now’s. Thoughts that tamper with your mood and require unravelling and meditation to bring you back.

There are days when your perspective can be summed up in an entire phrase – that by Alexander Den Heijer: “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”

There are days, therefore, when all you really need is to change your surroundings – even for a while – to gain new insight into the world around you. To alter your lens, to control your thoughts, to broaden your vision. So you can return stronger, more determined, and more open to modifying your daily habits.

The vastness out there

©MCD

Our time has become strange. It’s that portion of future history books that no one will be able to fully explain or rationally justify the reasons why things happen. People have become insane in every sense. We’re losing our grip on our selves, our actions, what we can control and what not, and most importantly our minds. There is a lot of anger out there; tension that cannot be relieved, unhealthy sentimental eruptions leading to what we dub as toxic. Actions that make no sense and cannot be predicted. But all are resulting in a negative flow of what has by now become a mundane routine. We are not shocked by anything anymore because nothing surprises us.

What if we changed our perspective? What if we – tried at least – to silence the negativity our minds speak to us?

Get out.

Of your head, your house, your situations.

Walk it off.

Just be alone with yourself and the nature surrounding you.

Breathe.

Let your eyes gaze beyond the horizon.

Realise how vast the world is and how tiny a part of it we are.

Change the way you see things and soon you’ll realise that things will themselves change too.

It’s not all that bad. You just think it is and you’ve convinced yourself it’s so.

Profound wishes all year through

It’s usually birthdays that give us a chance to review and reflect on where you’ve been and where you’re going. But the eve of a New Year fills you with determination and a goal-oriented mindset to improve things, to change, to evolve, to get out of the ‘same old’ and into something new, better, and exciting.

We look forward to new adventures with the passion to create new memories, surrounded by people with love and moments filled with laughter. We want to let go of the baggage we carry – be it emotional, psychological, or literal. We want to walk forward lighter, happier, and with a more optimistic outlook on life. Because the truth is that nothing is as idyllic as we hoped or we imagined, and most things in this life are beyond our control. We can manage our own reactions and response to everything though. And sometimes, things do happen for us and not to us.

So let’s commit to making these resolutions true all year round and not just the first couple of weeks. Let’s allow our actions to talk for us. Let’s share our moments of happiness and love with the people around us and not on our social media. And let’s vow to make this year the best yet, with nothing (and no one) less but with more and profound – more experience, more smiles, more growth in every aspect.

Here’s to a New Year full of sparkles and bangs and excitement all 12 months through!

Happy New Year everyone!

Quirk of Character

Introverts have a higher threshold than average for letting people in. Be it in their reading lists, their diaries, their lives, their homes, their minds, their hearts. If an introvert starts babbling away to you, you should know that they trust you and feel safe enough to confide in you. It’s not an easy feat for most to achieve.

Call it trust issues if you may, but introverts believe that the people around you need to compliment your happiness, your self-appreciation, and your confidence. Well, it’s what we should all really expect of others anyway. For if someone doesn’t add value to your life, why keep them there if they’ll only make you feel worse?

The truth is, there are certain instances in life that make you reconsider your friendships; who you consider your friends to be; who really are. Because it’s the ones who stick there through the rough times; when you have nothing to say or don’t even want to; at the times it feels like the whole world is against you and you’re raging against ‘the system’. It’s those who seek you as much as you search for them. It’s those who are willing to stay around when you fall face down and will help pick you up; those who see you at your worse are also the ones who deserve to see you at your best. Because as this excellent article says, “friendships do not have to be transactional, but they should absolutely be reciprocal”. It’s not all about having fun. It’s about being there for each other in every situation.

Each person reacts to life’s problems differently. We are not all the same. We have varying idiosyncrasies, mentalities, responses. Some seek assistance anywhere they can; others prefer to close up in their own shells and wait out the storm alone. It has to do with a person’s character and that’s not easy to affect. Introverts need to be left alone. They’ll come to you for help when they’re ready. But they want to know that you’re still there until they do.

In the end it all comes down to the fact that we virtually befriend hundreds of people on social media, but choose to have only a handful around; the best ones – those who remain no matter how far you unwillingly push them out.

“Beware of those who seek constant crowds; they are nothing alone”. – Charles Bukowski

“I restore myself when I’m alone”. – Marilyn Monroe

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.

Empathising difference

“All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”, wrote Leo Tolstoy in the beginning of Anna Karenina in 1878.

Misery has many forms. And this is true for all people.

We don’t realise how insignificant or trivial our problems are until we hear what someone else is facing.

But what we often fail to acknowledge is that we don’t understand what other people are going through no matter how much they (try to) explain. It’s usually because we don’t really want to empathise. We’re better off worrying about our own microcosm-shattering problems: where to go out, what to do to pass the day, who to call for an outing, what to watch on TV, where to go on holiday. We quarrel among ourselves because we can’t coordinate to have fun, yet other people are facing evictions, money problems, job security; actual issues of survival.

It puts it all into perspective, doesn’t it?

Well, it should.

There is a truth in that in order to survive you need to be thick-skinned. You need to be somewhat insensitive, allowing things to slide, and refusing to be affected by them. If you’re too perceptive and impacted by everything, you’re the only one to lose.

Because no one really cares if you’re struggling – with work, with family, with pretty much anything. If you can’t follow suit in the fun and the expenditure, you’ll soon be cut off. And no one really cares what or how you work. It’s simple: if we don’t understand what you do, we’ll consider it as not very important, so you can always ‘leave it for later’ – but certainly not for the weekend or a holiday, or for when we already have plans.

We have a tendency to only view life through our own lenses. We obstinately refuse to walk in someone else’s shoes, or even make the slightest of efforts to share their perspective of reality.

And it’s a shame. Because united we could achieve so much. Instead, we ravage each other as if we’re trying to free up space in this world we’re destroying.

Instead of lifting each other up, we’re surreptitiously trying to tear each other down.

Friends in a click

There are tens of people – at least – passing through our lives. Even daily, consider how many other people you cross paths with; people you don’t even see because you’re too busy looking at your phone, thinking of where you have to go or what you have to do; people you don’t recognize and you’ll probably never encounter again.

We’re not alone in this world, let alone in a country, city or village. Yet we tend to act like we are. Like only we are the ones who matter; like we take precedence and importance over others.

It’s not only to do with character. A person is self-centered and egoistic because of the way they’ve been raised. Our notions, mentality, beliefs are shaped from a very early age, by what we see around us, by the reactions we perceive way before we begin to understand them. They all become innate, entrenched in our own behavior as we grow up. If we do not develop a critical mind of our own, we don’t mature, we only perpetuate these views as ‘normal’.

Throughout the course of our lives, we only really ‘click’ with a handful of people. Those that will come and stay, regardless the circumstances or the distance. It is those people who understand you without much effort, whose ideas you agree with, to whom you don’t need to explain much, and for whom barriers are of no importance in maintaining a friendship.

True friends connect immediately. You feel it when you do. And you should feel (mutually) lucky to have them.

Zitti e Βuoni

People often have a weird tendency of not saying what they want at the time they’re supposed to. We tend to come up with all the right comebacks and arguments much after an incident occurs; the so-called l’esprit d’escalier (the predicament of thinking of the perfect reply too late).

Often it is much easier to say nothing in fear of provoking an argument. And as kids, we are usually told to be quiet and behave no matter how wrongly or unfairly we feel we’re being treated. We grow up with that attitude. With the notion of saying nothing because it’s ‘frowned upon’ or due to concerns of what our reaction may incite. So many movements have grown nowadays exactly because of this mentality. The most recent #MeToo incidents have sparked the question of why now and not then; yet regardless of the answer, there is the concern of why we don’t speak out at all, not only when or even after things happen. Things that are worthy of our voice being heard.

Italy’s winning song at Eurovision 2021 sent a loud message that difference matters and that making some noise may sometimes lead to something good; a change that everyone longs for but few actually act upon. In a performance that literally rocked Europe, this group appeared in controversial clothing and make-up to state that “vi conviene stare zitti e buoni” (“you’d better shut up and be quiet”), but adding the truth that people often don’t really know what they’re talking about (“Parla la gente purtroppo Parla non sa di che cosa parla”), and recognising that “Siamo fuori di testa ma diversi da loro” (we’re crazy but different from them”). Perhaps it is this boldness to be different that most appealed to the European public.

Because we all want to make a change. But few are courageous enough to do something. It’s easier to be quiet and concede to the norms, rather than speak out and disturb the status quo.