Inspiration
Articles to inspire authentic living on the topics of resilience, spirituality, and self-growth with touches of storytelling, depth, and humor.
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Farewell 2020!
I am grateful for 2020! This is not a joke, although for most of it those words sounded like a fictional statement.
How many things happened in one year? There were so many unexpected blows. It brought me to my knees, and it gave me hope. It showed me to drop expectations but to hold on to the faith that things always work on our favor. It taught me to release the “hows” while keeping an eye on the “whats.”
The Threat of Climate Change (Internal Climate Change, That Is)
For decades it has kidnapped headlines. Climate change has come to stay! Scientists have been puzzled by the shift in weather conditions due to global warming. It has made us more conscious of our environment: we now recycle and reuse, refrain from using plastic, donate to environmental organizations, applaud little girls begging the UN to do something to save Earth. Climate change is quite an equalizer: it affects us all regardless of our socio-economic conditions, religion or race. But what can global warning teach us about our internal world? How do we deal with the constant shift in temperatures of our character?
Growing up in Caracas, with its perpetual Spring-like temperatures all year round, was (at least in the topic of weather conditions) pretty simple. By looking for grey clouds or the singing of birds you would know if it was going to rain or not. Should you bring a sweater for the early morning or chilly nights? Do you want to wear boots or sandals (both appropriate at different times of the day)? You could crave a hot chocolate or ice cream, a cold beer or a port? Jackets and shorts could really been wore every month, which means there was no need to have different wardrobes. There was no need to look at the weather forecast. A look outside would tell you if you needed an umbrella or not, the only variable accessory.
The Joy Bank
“My soul is very anxious to die soon.” Those words have hunt me for more than two decades.
I met Mrs. Elizabeth my senior year in college. I was working on my thesis, a documentary photography project that ended in an exhibit and book. It was called “Searching for the Soul”. For moths I went several times a week to a retirement home to interview and photograph residents. My introductory question, because I thought something light would break the ice, was “What is the soul?” Yes, most residents did not find it very inviting at first. A natural shy person, I had a hard time establishing conversations with the residents at first. Many of them, confronted with the resistance to aging, hated having their pictures taken. Nevertheless, I came back everyday with prints to my improvised models. Some were grateful from the beginning eager to share the photographs with their loved ones. Others were so self-conscious that hated seeing their photos. One woman, tore up a print with anger in front of my face. It took me almost three months for her to like her pictures but by the end, she was the one begging for one more photograph.
One afternoon, several residents were playing bingo in a social area, teenage volunteers calling numbers aloud. Some folks were sitting parallel to each other without talking, lost on the realm of their memories; a few men and women were absently minded precisely because they were in the process of losing their precious memories. As I walked around taking candids of the residents, I observed a woman in her nineties standing next to a column. She was thin, just like her hair that hit at her shoulders. A yellow headband with a tiny bow in the center on her head and a blue jacket that she hugged around her waist. Her grin…although partially toothless, was the shiniest, biggest, most extraordinary smile I have ever seen. I had to go talk to her.
“Excuse me, can I ask you a question…” I said timidly while I approached her, camera and notebook on hand.
Mrs. Elizabeth looked at me with her grayish eyes and her imprinted signature smile. I was not sure if she heard me. The sound of music and talks in the background made it hard to strike a two-way conversation, especially when hearing was a skilled commonly reduced among the residents.
“I am not sure what you are asking me, but I will try to respond…My soul, my soul is very anxious to die soon.” Mrs. Elizabeth said without losing a single ray of sun coming out of her smile. Judging by the way the room suddenly got lighter, I could swear golden beams extended from her body.
The Wake Up Call
Technology has great advantages. Being woken up every morning by a voice-controlled speaker seems like one of the Jetson episodes I used to watch as a kid. Alexa turns off an alarm every morning and half asleep, we have to try to make her understand that we are not ready to wake up yet and we need more time.
“Alexa, wake me up in five minutes,” the instructions sound very clear in one’s mind but they come up as a non-sense slurp of words that all of the algorithms put together by Amazon can’t come close to decipher.
Instructions are usually repeated several times until Alexa finally understands, which means that by repetition we have awaken ourselves from deep sleep. The alarm usually goes off five minutes later, and five minutes after that in an endless story. In a way, I miss the snooze button on a conventional alarm clock. Just one hand was enough to shut the alarm and guarantee a later reminder.
Being a night owl most of my life, I usually despise waking up in the morning. Fortunately, I also suffer from the 20th century’s disease called “obsession with productivity,” so after only two tries I am out of bed and ready to seize the day. However, I have thinking lately of the importance of wake up calls, not necessarily as it pertains to voice-controlled speakers but mostly about life events that shake us to our roots and kick us out of our dormant state as a bucket of cold water. When we remain apathetic and paralyzed by life’s circumstances, what does it take us to wake up? What makes us answer the call?
Living NOW, while we can
Yes, there is not much we can control about our current pandemic situation. But what we can control is what happens inside. At the moment, so many plans are on hold, which feels like a hammer shattering the armature of planners and control freaks. Maybe you don’t fit that characteristics, but you are upset about the vacation you cancelled or then one you still don’t know you will be able to take in the Summer. The world has clicked on the Pause button and we can’t decide when Play will be available. But that is the future and the future is uncertain right now (and it usually is anyways), so what are we left with?
The letter that makes all the difference
Recently, while reediting a novel I recently wrote, I noticed a mistake. It was just one letter, but it changed the complete meaning of the sentence. Of course, fixing it was very easy. My mind, however, had been shaken.
They are always leaving, but they are never gone
It could have been the heat, the thirst or maybe the fact that I was exhausted. This morning I attended a very restorative yoga class where we were practicing mudras that represented gratitude. It was impossible not to feel the heart opening up.
But at the of the practice during the final relaxation an image came to me. As much as I tried to quiet it down it just insisted on staying. So I let it, I stop resisting and paid attention to what it wanted to show me.
I saw the most delicious creek…
Building memories, one song and one fire at a time
It might have been the melancholic tone of a snowy day by the fireplace with my three kids, quite a rarity these days that the older ones have tons of commitments, but while I was at the piano a thought hit me. I was thinking of songs to play and I remembered one that I really like but have not heard in years. I still remembered when I first was introduced to it by my dad. From all the memories I have of him, all the things we shared and all the things we didn’t, music was never at the top of my list. However today when I thought of that song so many of the songs and genres I learned about from him started cascading. From classical records, new age music, flamenco, ballads, opera and instrumental songs, his style was so varied and he loved his extensive music collection that everyone borrowed from. He challenged me to hear whatever was out of my comfort zone and learned from new musicians. I felt immense gratitude for the love for music he inspired in me and for all the memories we got to share even when it seems that we did not have that much time together between his demanding career, me leaving Venezuela young and he passing ten years after. But those sweet memories prevail in my heart.
I wished upon a star....and I discovered magic
Looking at the stars: one of the favorite pastimes of my childhood. There was something always so incredible enchanting about it. That sense of us being so little among the universe, the fact that it always changed and at the same time remained eternal and universal. I could not even count the amount of hours I spent looking for a shooting star or a comet with the sole intention of making a wish, because it seemed that that rare appearance could only symbolize that something special was about to happen. Growing up we lived in a hill on the outskirts of a big city with the gorgeous view of The Avila, a mountain that at approximately 9 thousand feet high offered constant Kodak opportunities. But the best part of our location is that the altitude and the fact that it was far from commercial areas or highways offered a privilege point of view of the celestial map.
One day my mother brought home an astronomy book that I took possession of without even asking. I loved learning from the constellations, started recognizing the patterns. By learning the names of some of the stars I got intrigued by their mythological origins and that is how my love for Greek Mythology was born. Now that I think about it in retrospect, what drawn me into Mythology were the stories, the characters how it showed something universal about our human nature in a very magical setting.
Although long gone are the days when I though I needed to write a compilation of Greek mythology books and I don’t look at the stars with the same frequency, there is something still so incredibly moving when I look into the sky and see that stars in all of its glory. It is almost like a call to forget my mundane existence and blend with the universe.
Things that happen in a gym’s locker room
Two young women stormed in the locker room. One of them, a tall girl who is contemplating herself in the mirror, is complaining about having to take her car to the shop among other things. The other one says empathically, “you are not having the best day, aren’t you?” The girl in the mirror turns around, walks to her friend and shares that there is more. She says in a not too shyly voice, “I am cheating.”
What a way to spark everyone’s curiosity!
I needed to get ready so I missed all the juicy details. I spent the next few minutes imagining how their conversation went, who was she cheating with, why, what was she going to do now, etc., until I get distracted by a reflection on my field of vision. A woman had a hairdryer in her hand. She was naked and proud of it. No judgement, I am used to it. We have been together in the sauna many times before and she is always like that, au naturale.
Flexibility vs Balance
About eighteen years ago I went to my first yoga class. At that time, the instructor was a very wise woman in her seventies. She would read very inspiring stories during savasana. One day she made a comment that has stuck with me for years. She said that we are either flexible or have good balance but it is difficult to have both.
I have since raised the question many times of what I am. Without a doubt I incline more towards flexibility. I am not Elastic Girl, but I do notice that I tend to be able to stretch more than I would expect was normal for someone with my lack of experience. However I am that student that in more difficult poses always falls. As I am trying to improve my practice I have been questioning what I could do to at least not fall as much, provoked by a low-key sense of embarrassment and annoyance (the ego, the ego, I know!)
Butterflies in the stomach
What a delicious feeling is to fall in love! Those first days when everything is a bliss, butterflies flutter in our stomach, we glow, the world seems brighter, we smile alone while remembering the object of our affection, time is eternal when we are apart from that person, time goes too fast when we are together.
That feeling is so wonderful, however....it is fleeting.
A few days ago I went to a very slow yoga class. And by slow I mean we only did like five poses. The rest of the class was just practicing awareness of every single move, of our breathing, of the space around us. That is when it hit me...mindfulness is the most similar thing to the state of infatuation.