Sharing a world

©Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

“You know how social media applications remind you of what you posted this day a year or more ago?”

“Yes, it’s like the memories you didn’t know you had”.

“Exactly. Well, here’s what I found”.

She showed him a picture of a shopping street in the Middle East.

“Do you remember this?”

They had gone together a few years back.

He hardly recalled the occasion the photo was taken.

But she couldn’t forget.

It was the day they realised the world was vast and different.

But it was also when she realised she only wanted to share it with him.

Also part of Friday Fictioneers

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The world through a lens

We all have a magnifying glass through which we view the world. The events, the circumstances, the people that surround us. But the thing is, we all have the illusion that we all view the world in the same way, because “our view” automatically means it is the “norm”. We each have a different lens, and thus a different view of the world, a different interpretation to life events and a different perspective on all experiences and people.

What we don’t understand or don’t agree with is usually feared. But because fear is a feeling that contradicts our egoisms, we tend to demean everything different to our own view. We treat it with contempt, spite, even anger and dislike simply because we have a different “rulebook” of how the world should work.

When it comes to people, we become hypocritical, showing a positive attitude on the exterior but inside boiling with rage against them. This is often the source of our negative behaviour towards people we dislike, disagree with, or simply cannot communicate well with. it is the reason why respect is not something that can be demanded but rather it is earned. We tend to reciprocate the attitude and behaviour we receive.

Unfortunately, though, not everyone has the same heart as us. Not even the same mind. Thus, it is unrealistic to expect that we’ll get back what we send out. Because not all people have the same lens. And if it is blurred, the world seems a little foggy and more pessimistic than we hoped.

We all get what we deserve in the end. So let’s try and be kind even to the people we dislike or who treat us badly. Karma will take care of them.

Smart and wise

Idealists believe that all of us have the power to change the world. It is how we use that hidden strength that affects everything. It is how we cultivate our mind and lives that determines how smart we become. There is always something extra to appreciate in people who try to learn more every day. Who you see are making an effort to improve themselves. To develop their knowledge, their skills and, ultimately, their lives.

“A smart man only believes half of what he hears. A wise man knows which half” (Jeff Cooper).

It is easy to recognise these people. They are the ones who don’t care much about social media gossip, who prefer knowledge quizzes over time-wasting ‘candy-crash-type’ games. The ones who are curious about the world and genuinely want to learn. The ones who constantly try to find new challenges to engage with because they know that this is how we grow. The ones who get bored easily, who can’t sit still, who fidget often but also stay quiet a lot. They are the ones who can get lost in a book or have their attention distracted by an endless trail-quest for information online. They are those who get excited about the little things and who emit a childish energy when it comes to things they are passionate about.

People who use their brains more tend to be happier, healthier and more active.

They are the ones you should seek to have beside you. Because they are those who make you want to become better too, to learn more things and to share that energy within which lies the power to change the world.

Steps forward

©MCD

The secret to success is to have faith that you can; you don’t have to see the whole staircase to take the first step. You just have to be willing to move forward.

It’s amazing how your perspective can change if you simply walk a little out of your comfort zone. Go to places you’ve never been before. Locations that you can’t even point to on a map. Places you didn’t even know existed. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.

You’ll be astounded by how much beauty there is in this world. And by how close it is to you. Even your neighbouring city or village holds secrets and attractions that you don’t know about, simply because you’re too lazy or stuck in your own world to go look.

Go travel. Go live. Go learn about the world.

It will open your mind and make you realise that most often you worry too deeply about things that shouldn’t matter so much.

Take the step. You won’t regret it.

The world in her eyes

The greatest love poems are written in dark nights of silver moons glistening on shattered adolescent hearts. Out of the strongest pain come the most genuine and powerful truths.

That’s what she was reading before she came to meet you. It was what made her tears start streaming again. She was trying. Trying to go on but not wanting to without you.

You could see it in her eyes, the pupils rippling like broken glass. She avoided looking at you because it hurt too much and she didn’t want to let you see the darkness that had overtaken her soul. She didn’t want you to see that, when you left, you drained her of the life you had imbued her with. Yet, she still loved you. She wanted to tell you how much she missed you. You know you felt the same. But for some reason you were both too selfish to admit to what you truly felt.

She had vowed to herself she would melt that wall of ice you had raised around you. She was certain you were meant to be together. You had been through so much. Everyone expected you would end up together. Forever. That’s the way it should go. Instead, while everyone was taking steps forwards, you were making them backwards. Out of miscommunications and bad judgements.

She wanted the world and, in her eyes, that was you.

She still wants that. She may no longer think of you as the super-hero she pictured you would be, but she still hopes deep down you are the tramp-turned-prince she dreams of. She still wants you. But you’re too stubborn to let her in. You know that she fits so perfectly like no other in your arms. In your mind. And in your heart. Every second you let pass without telling her that you’re not thinking of her or lying that it is not true, you plunge the dagger deeper inside. Because she has realised that it is those that can cause you the greatest happiness that ultimately will cause your deepest pain.

An innate curiosity

Robert took out his notebook and began to scribble frantically. It would have seemed absolutely normal for the journalist he was, had he not been in the middle of a queue in a supermarket. Across him a middle-aged man who had just finished paying for his groceries was looking for his wife who had re-entered the aisles in search of an item they had obviously forgotten. But that was not what was worth noting. The man stood boldly at the till and yelled out her name. His wife was called Nora. Once he had no response, he asked the security guard roaming the general area, where his wife was. The guard looked up in awe, as if someone had awoken him from a deep sleep by pinching his arm. “Who is your wife?” he asked. The episode continued for a few more minutes, until the wife finally appeared without holding anything and asked her husband in the most natural of tones, “did you find it?” He hadn’t moved all this time.

Robert was smiling as he was noting it all down. It was the perfect story for his next novel.

He usually found these sporadic gems in the most common places. In markets, in buses, in coffee shops, even just during a stroll around his block.

It is amazing how much you can find by simply observing and listening to people.

Robert had an innate curiosity. It was characteristic of his profession, but it was something that to him came natural. He always wanted to learn more and constantly urged himself to discover something further than what was handed to him. That, he believed, was the only way he would mature as a person and expand his knowledge.

It’s good to wonder about the world. It opens your eyes and ears and takes you to places you would never have otherwise encountered.

A minute change

Light travels at about 300,000 kilometres per second. Sound travels at about 340 metres per second. So you usually see things faster than you hear them. In some ways, this may also partly explain the jet-lag – that feeling of being in a parallel universe – that overwhelms you when you change countries, no matter how small the distance you travel.

A lot can change in a few seconds. And with the constantly advancing technology, we can roam the world as if we are merely travelling across cities, instead of across continents and oceans.

No matter, though, if you’re travelling 900km or 10,000km, if it takes you an hour’s flight or ten hours, the same strange feeling somehow finds its way into your mind. The one minute you are in house A, of city A in country A, laughing and dining with family and friends, and then a couple of hours later you’re in house B, in city B, country B, rummaging supermarkets for your bare necessities, mopping the house floors and cooking for your own meals. All of a sudden, you’re on the other side of the online chat screen.

It’s a great feeling to know that you can break the confines of time and space with such ease and feel that the entire world is at your reach whenever you feel like it. But it always requires at least a few minutes of re-adjustment. So that your mind and spirit can catch up with your physical presence. It would almost be as if you were sliding through multiple dimensions, if only you didn’t know for a fact that you are still in that same single one we have. So all you can do is acclimatize yourself as quickly as possible and always make the most of every minute you spend country-hopping!

Feed yourself with the world around you

Feed your life with the enjoyment of doing something you love,
That relaxes you,
That fills your heart with passion.

Feed your mind with thoughts that lift you up,
That causes a smile to form on your face,
That challenges you to dream beyond the borders of space.

Feed your eyes with the beauty that encircles you,
That triggers you to gleam with joy,
That makes you marvel with the world we live in.

Feed your soul with the enchantment that is today.
Don’t let it perish in negativity and grey.
Lift your spirits and you will rise,
To be the very person you wish to be.

A World of Shock

You know that old woman who shoved you while hurrying to get off the bus this morning? She was running to get to the hospital, as her husband suffered a heart attack while she was at the market. And remember that young man getting sunburnt on the side of the pavement where he was rooted, who even offered his blessing when you stopped to hand him some change? Two hours later, his cousin dropped by in a fancy car, picked him up and went to the beach.

Things are not always what they seem. Nor can we even imagine what the reality is truly like. In a world marred by constant talk of crisis, sensationalist media reports, and the looming pessimism of disasters – be they natural, financial, political or even moral – we live in a constant state of instability and shock. We are fighting nervous breakdowns by pretending we’re OK, by keeping on moving, by refusing to even consider what would happen if we stopped and breathed it all in.

People all around us seem so different, even though we share common ground. Nonetheless, all we mostly see – or chose to acknowledge – is the extent to which we vary from each other. And this usually always means that “the others” are most often luckier, more privileged, and “have it easy”. Or even that those who have managed to travel beyond the continent, somehow have returned deeming themselves over and above their compatriots, as if now they are somehow better than everyone else, as if they no longer belong to this world. There are people like that. Who managed to rise up from the slums into a life of riches, and all of a sudden, they have become too important to deal with “petty commoners”, or even “locals”. Those who rise from their ashes remembering their past and helping others survive it too are, unfortunately, a rarity in this world.

In one of the most enthralling, shocking, riveting, and illuminating books of modern times, Naomi Klein describes exactly this. How we live in a world of shock. How certain capitalists pursue a “Shock Doctrine” in order to impose Milton Friedman’s Chicago School model of deregulation, privatization, and cut of public spending. It reveals our world as it truly is, one run by capitalism that has no interest for its human impact. She dubs this “Disaster Capitalism”, because it concerns big private companies profiting at the expense of the poorer and lower down on the social scale, whenever disaster (in any form) strikes. It is the implementation of a shock and awe policy. Simply considering the world we live in today – this constant state of “crisis” – it is not hard to see that certain international institutions (the International Monetary Fund, for example) are doing exactly this – demanding that their terms be implemented if money is to be disbursed; terms that include drastic spending cuts, VAT increases, privatisations, cuts in the public sector, no matter what that may mean to the levels of unemployment, poverty and a break in the social chasm. According to this powerful book, the only thing that shines some optimism among us, is the fact that memory is the strongest shock absorber of all, and the only one capable of providing resistance to the repeating of such events.

No matter what you read, or if you don’t read at all, Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” is an eye-opening book that everyone – every politician who is not an idiot, every citizen who wants to make a difference, every person who refuses to be a lemming – should read. You will never view the world in the same way ever again.

Being the first at something different

For some non-apparent reason we all rush, push and shove to be the first in line for pretty much everything – to get fresh milk, to then pay for it, to learn the news, to see the new film, to watch a new episode of a popular series.

We dedicate so much energy to be the first to experience something that so many other people will also accomplish just a few seconds later. Yet we believe that being the first to do something as trivial as whatever it is we rush to be the first to do, somehow gives us importance and elevates us to VIP status. As if we are better than the rest, simply because we were the first to get a loaf of freshly baked bread, just like another hundred people after us did.

Just imagine how much better this world would be if we dedicated as much zeal into being the first in actually doing something worthwhile; in discovering something innovative and new, that would benefit all the other hundred people who would get to practice it after us. Just think, what a difference we would make if we were the first to bring some new development in our own lives…

Also part of Daily Prompt: Powerful Suggestion