Awakening....

Trust: what value does it have?

“Trust is important, but it is also dangerous. It is important because it allows us to form relationships with others and to depend on others—for love, for advice, for help with our plumbing, or what have you—especially when we know that no outside force compels them to give us such things. But trust also involves the risk that people we trust will not pull through for us; for, if there were some guarantee that they would pull through, then we would have no need to trust them. Thus, trust is also dangerous. What we risk while trusting is the loss of the things that we entrust to others, including our self-respect, perhaps, which can be shattered by the betrayal of our trust.” (Philip Pettit)

Trust is a central focus in any type of relationship, from trust in institutions and friendship to trust in the self.  And no wonder, trust is a virtue that contributes to the foundation of our identities in connection with our social interactions that puts our vulnerability at play.  The feeling of trust  will be the stepping stone in making decisions that will determine our stand for  openness vs. privacy,  proximity vs. closeness,  control vs. respect,  friendliness vs. affinity, bonding vs. circumscribing, integrating vs. terminating.

In short,  trust will help advance or back away from relationships, to connect deeper or keep it on the surface. Could it be rational to trust other people? How much attention do we put on the trust we convey?

It will probably take years to experience the security that trust brings, and the search is usually through the small details to evidence the virtue. Through that trip, many times we feel disappointed with betrayal; though, it is often our expectations and interests that betray us, not the other. The real cause is the tendency to idealize the other in response to our interests, which manipulate our intuition and rationality and dazzle our capacity of differentiating trust as a real virtue of the other from the hope we put in trust.

In other words, we can easily feel we can trust when we have certain interest, such as romantic, cultural, financial, social; but in reality, the virtue may be non-existent. We can easily show the coherence that displays trust, but in reality, it may be not truly genuine (bias attitudes are usually out of our concern when involve people whom we are not really attracted by). So, in becoming a trustworthy person, do we warrant certain behaviors based on our interests so as to assure the attention or affection of the other, or are our attitudes generated from the mere value we find in trust?

Trust is the security that the other won’t let us down because genuinely cares.

Trust brings quality and growth in human interactions as it is a pillar ingredient in revealing our emotions that will build the bond with the other through affinity. It also healthily solidifies our emotional stability that feeds our maturity in interactions.  Is it an inherited human condition or is it a virtue that we can build?

Like other virtues, trust can be built. It is necessary to commit to being honest with ourselves in regards to the reasons that are leading us to trust or not, and  in regards to the reasons for the quality of trust we provide. Trust also calls for commitment to genuinely care to construct coherence between what we expect and what we do, and to honestly look for coherence between what reality can do for us and what we wish for. These reasons will help us distinguish trust from reliance, interest from care.

Trust is not merely found in heroism; it is mainly revealed through the clarity and honesty of the small every-day attitudes. What things do we do that diminishes the trust that others perceive in us? What value does trust have in our lives?

“Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”  (Sigmund Freud)

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” (Maya Angelou)

Inés

Dialogues with Love

Every afternoon around three, Sarah and Ben take their cassette player downstairs to the building lobby to listen Frank Sinatra hits. Ben carries his cane and Sarah drags her feet in a walker. Once at the lobby, Ben helps Sarah sit down and makes sure she is comfortable. Then, he operates the cassette player, joins her in the couch, and they both grab hands. For about two hours, they listen to the music without saying a word while they fixed their looks on an invisible spot somewhere in the room in a trip that seems to be back in time. When the music brings some shared memory, they look at each other and smile.

It is impossible not to get caught in this picture without admiring the situation and wondering about love. How many times do we define love from the bad experiences lived instead of finding a constructive look from what it is possible? Is it because we constantly focus on the results instead putting the look in the process?

We live in a culture that is not trained to deal with processes, in where happiness is a mere product, a glamorous outcome, or an immediate and easy access to empty pleasure; a culture that presents utilitarian choices and incentives dysfunctional search. I remember my grandparents would have the same oak dining table for 20 years, and then the same table would be passed to the children and grandchildren as a gesture of value and continuation of affection. Now, we buy tables every time we move without a blink of an eye. Are we transferring the same skills to our relationships making us devalue effort, risk, pauses, and emotional literacy by putting the focus on simulations of love?

Ben and Sarah do not have the most exciting stories to tell. Their love simply manifests through their purposeful looks, the slow and coordinated walk, the secured strength in the passion of their holding hands, the shared silence they both understand, the complicity as they listen to music, the dearness and calmness of their smiles... the trust that if one falls, the other will be there as support.

Sarah and Ben can be themselves with each other, trustfully sharing their emotions in a world that moves around. It took them many years to construct this profound dialogue of affection, respect, understanding, and emphatic knowledge and care of the needs, desires, meaning, and feelings of each other.

How is our dialogue with love? What is the story we tell about love?

"Harmony is pure love, for love is a concerto." Lope de Vega-

Inés

“Love is not a state, a feeling, a disposition, but an exchange, uneven, fraught with history, with ghosts, with longings that are more or less legible to those who try to see one another with their own faulty vision.”

(by Judith Butler)

Mirrors

The atmosphere and the air transpire a profound sensation of sadness at Sachensenhausen.  The emotions are so strong that overload the capacity of understanding, the body perceives the heavy suffering, and the mind goes crazy asking itself how such atrocities could have happened, how reactions took so long in stopping the evilness, and why similar realities have been repeating around the globe.

The experience revolves everything inside in a bitter complexity of anger, sorrow, indignation, compassion, shame.  But, at the same time, it pushed my spirit to question my reality and my humanity, bringing a different look towards the past, who I am and could become.  I could not help fathoming about the capacity of human beings of generating pain, how sometimes our perspectives on reality can make ourselves alienate in mental and emotional cages that silence and disarm the empathy for others, how our weakness makes us believe that we know what we can do. Yes, my reality may be far away different from the possibility of being part of the atrocities of a concentration camp; however, do those situations reflect the potential of my human capabilities in my small world? Do I cluster my view, consciousness, and empathy making these believe that pain and anger are only products of the perceptions of the other, reassuring the soul that I am not capable of generating pain?

“We are not responsible for what the other person can feel; we are only responsible for our own feelings” is a common statement around our culture.  At Sachensenhausen, those words rumbled my mind and only added insult to the experience.  Such clichés merely color self-improvement, unlink from sensitivity, and respond to trends that do not permit genuine questioning about our own vulnerability and our capacity of change. They numb the ability to understand that our knowledge and actions may not possess absolute truth or righteousness, and that our creeds and beliefs may not be privileging humanity. Does the Other disappear in our constructed worlds? Do we respond to what we are called to do without acknowledging that in front of us there is a human with needs, desires, and life? Do our standards precede the capacity of empathy?

It is a tremendous difficult task. Our growth goes hand-in-hand with the other, and pain comes in many forms. If the potential capacity to touch humanity for good and also for bad is not acknowledged, abuses and injustices do not have a place for challenge or improvement.  At more personal level, the possibility of experimenting the delicious feeling of connecting by empathy is lost in the intent to be right instead of happy.

Casablanca writer Muriel Barbery in her wonderful book L'Élégance du hérisson  says “we never see beyond our certainties, and what it is even worse, we have renounced to know people, we just know ourselves without recognizing  ourselves in those permanent mirrors. If we knew it, if we took consciousness of the fact that we do not look at ourselves but on the other, and if we were alone in the desert, we would go mad.”

Inés

Emergency Exits

"At some point in our lives, we have experienced situations in which we have the need to restart. Situations from which we would like to escape and run away through the emergency exit, an exit that is not the common exit, but the exit that is taken when in crisis” says the Chilean writer José Ignacio Valenzuela in his new book Emergency Exit or Salida de Emergencia.

In a world that moves fast and constantly bombards with new information and positive scatological and miraculous solutions, it becomes harder to make the necessary time to identify and take care of personal crisis. Crisis sometimes only make themselves visible in desperation.

While listening to Valenzuela’s talk, I wonder what my emergency exits are. And, how do they help me?

Traveling is a major emergency exit in my life.  Traveling brings me perspective from situations that became suffocated with stress, doubt, dissatisfaction, pain.  These exits are emotional rescue reactions that serve as both escapes and shelters by facilitating a break  free from the chaos and stagnation inside. They open to different air that refreshes the trapping present and recuperates those inner desires that have been numbed by responsibilities, negligence, and erosion. They remind me that reality can be happier, more balanced, and more meaningful.  But, could emergency exits become self-destructive? 

While they set off the inner alarms letting us realize of the need of oxygen for strong personal experiences, they could also become harmful choices if they transform in compulsive behaviors by acting as temporary evasion to the major problem. So, where is the balance? When do these doors open to rescue the self, and when do they lead to constant excuses to get away from the need of genuine change?

As in airplanes, we receive training on how to exit in case of emergency every time we start a trip. However, when in extreme situations, the contact with our most profound unknown emotions can produce desperate actions that can lead to worse results. Yet, many negative outcomes can be prevented if well-designed training and signs are in place. The more we educate ourselves about ourselves, the more we will enable ourselves to take assertive steps to make sense of our existence.

Crisis require careful connection and comprehension of the emotions and feelings so as to be able to put order in the internal chaos that have surrounded the most delicious areas of life. If we don't pause and listen to our emotional responses, we might just end up running back and forth in a burning building.

Seeing, acting, transforming are the first steps in making emergency exits as way out of the ordinary into the extraordinary. 

"It is in the ink and creativity where the real emergency exits are." Valenzuela

Inés

Backpacking for Life: What or Why?

Having a light backpack helps turn the focus on the essence of traveling and its pleasures, facilitating to discover new places that can only be reached by foot, allowing for itinerary changes anytime; most important, it boosts the genuine old friendships and incentives new connections since the only interest is just enjoying, being, meeting, and sharing. But, while traveling, I many times wondered why it is so hard to transfer it to everyday life.

Accumulating is a very common human practice as it brings certain security (or pseudo-security) because ‘possessing’ provides with a sense of having reality under control by silencing uncertainty and self-consciousness with momentary tasty snacks that bring the sensation of fullness. Culture incentives for accumulating all type of material objects  making them accessible at low costs and endless installments, accumulating as many ‘friends’ as possible as in Facebook and Twitter, accumulating tasks and activities that bring social status, accumulating dreams for after retirement. But, do our things, emotions, and relationships help us grow and expand?

Throughout the trip, I had to often stop to make room in the backpack. It was inevitable to compare this process with life backpacking, and asked myself about what relationships were genuine and contributed to live more meaningful.  It was not an easy task to decide what to keep, what to renew, and what to let go; certain things seemed to be very useful and many others were hard to leave out due to the emotional attachment. Why is it sometimes so difficult to make happier decisions, to establish authentic relationships, and keep healthy options? 

Identifying what is only attractive and brings momentary exaltation requires time, energy, self-transparency, and even painful looks to face, move, clean, store or let go. Unconsciously, it is tempting to respond to fear and manipulate our own reality to reassure ourselves that what we have is what we need.  So, how to realize what makes the life backpack heavier and set us off to wander? And, how to recognize what makes us feel truly alive?

Well-being and completeness feed from mindful choices and positive quality of interactions with ourselves, reality, and people that are far from limiting our potentials; on the contrary, they carry a priceless bliss that nourishes on trust, care, and rapport. And, the emotions felt are unforgettable, irreplaceable, and replenish us in curious ways, empowering the self to mature, to create, to transform, to act with heart.

Perhaps, instead of asking what things we fill our lives with, we should ask ourselves why we put those things in our lives.

Like backpacking, the task starts by creating spaces and fearlessly inhabiting them.

“We cannot, after all, judge a biography by its length, by the number of pages in it; we must judge by the richness of the contents...Sometimes the 'unfinisheds' are among the most beautiful symphonies.”  -Viktor E. Frankl

Inés

At random...

From Ulryka and Stefan's garden.

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Blind Spots

It is Monday 8:00 AM. At Publix fast lane cashier, he pays for his bottle of milk and bag of bagels. He is not the glamorous, engaged in fun, worry-free, and highly physical attractive man that our culture frequently depicts.   His short white beard, his extreme thinness, and his wrinkle shirt with ‘war veteran’ sign portray an image that leaves him alone in the midst of people that divert their looks away from the possibility of discomfort involved if caught in conversation with him. With a wobble voice, he tells the cashier about the pride he feels for his war merits. His narrative conveys a long-lasting commitment to ideals and an irrefutable decision to strive. But, it is inevitable to perceive a tremendous struggle to continuing living with some integrity in a society that quickly judges by brand, appearance, and status.   How is our look towards reality when we face moments, people, circumstances that break free from the security of the imposed and subliminal expectations of our environments?

Society and media constantly seduces into utopias that point at validating our self-fulfillment prophecies that suit our projects into one-size-fits-all happiness in dependency-free worlds with nonexistent conflicts or differences, full of pharmaceuticals, and 24-hour non-stop sex fantasies. But, we are not told that these utopias will only set ourselves up for imminent fall when faced with real time shows.

Through an easy-to-reach so called security goals, social and popular conceptions shape our attitudes towards our choices. Since very early years, we are surrendered by unrealistic Cinderella stories that build a protected place in our minds from where we fantasize with reality and secretly cultivate a distorted perception of the world we live in. A view that makes it seem more like television portrays in where we live up to unrealistic expectations about how others, life, and our happiness should be. This protected 'successful' view many times blind us away from the chance of being in contact with real life propellers and true life-like success. Anyhow, when we are in contact with them, we often do not know how to deal with the overwhelmed feelings they produce so we opt for magical unconscious exits.

How much consciousness do we put in every day choices? How real are our life scripts?

It is at hand to look up-to bubbled results as happiness thermometers, and even though we recognize the signs of rented and unrealistic goals,  it is not that easy to live free from them since they act as emotional outlets: we desensitize from ‘what is real’ by objectifying people and judgments, bringing temporal security through a limited vision that encapsulates our stories and others in fixed predictable boxes. Our minds make great efforts to accommodate to these mandates (truly believing it is the best); otherwise, questioning if our life projects come from real possibilities could easily create cacophony that makes us feel uncomfortable around our own environment.

Living realistically is an everyday commitment to continue the walk with as much happiness as we can hold. But, to be able to hold, we need to consciously free space from bonds that pull our fears in and push our sense of duty out, restricting our vision into imagined destinations that are impossible to reach and in where people are impossible to meet; destinations that serve to the social fascination that glues us with others in ‘made in Hollywood’ machines turning our individuality into profound myopia.

Real scripts help us live fruitfully. Only by touching ground through empathy with ourselves and the other, we can be the writers of our own scripts. The writing process will require daily braveness, clarity and coherence, patience and a call for honesty... but, we won't have to deal with cleansing  heavy make up every night.

"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you." (Jean-Paul Sartre)

Inés

Tango: The Art of Togetherness

Claudia and I met at a tiny bohemian shop of Buenos Aires. We both share the same passion: Tango. She had come all the way from Switzerland to grasp on Tango to overcome a broken heart. For me, Tango is the door to fully feel my emotions and let go.

Is Tango a lost art as it is the art of living in company?

Dancing Tango walks ourselves intimately into quixotic conversations with those inner spins in need of amatory ballads that can only be possible through an intimate shared encounter of body, mind, and heart. 

Tango biggest challenge is to reach harmony by embracing the music in connection with the bodies. It is all about where the music takes you, how your senses are moved at the beat of its rhythm, and how you interpret the piece to create a deep but smooth dialogue with your partner.

The precision of its technique only comes with practice!

The woman and the man torsos need to be always facing at the same level, leaving enough space between each other to be able to create steps.  Feeling each other movements is the most significant skill in generating leading responses. Both bodies must be slightly leaning, supporting the weigh on each others’ hands at heart line.  This unnoticeable support, but yet crucial, is the axis from where both always depart and come back, and will secure the balance of each dancer needed when direction changes. 

Adornos or  firuletes (adornments) are what makes the Tango more attractive. However, it is essential to differentiate fantasy Tango (only danced in shows) from real Tango.  Fantasy Tango is filled with colossal and hypnotic movements that appeal at creating adrenaline shots to mostly attract the attention of the audience. On the other hand, every day or real Tango incorporates magical adornments but does not merely depend on them.

Each adorno or firulate must be performed with intention and determination. The man ‘marca’ (or leads) and the woman interprets the marca to perform a caresses (a gentle stroking with leg), an enganche or scoop (a little hook with the legs around the man’s thigh), or a cruzada or ocho (a figure in 8 shape where the man and woman mirror movements). None of these movements should entangle the dance; they should always appeal at pleasing the body need for expression and suiting the codes created by the couple. These codes are the guiding energy of the dance and they are generated from the complicity of the conversation the dancers have through the sentiment of the music.

From time to time, there may be amagues. Amagues are steps that threaten to move some direction but go the opposite, or threaten to advance but stay still. The amagues are meant to bring spice, assortment, or even glamour to the dance; but, if an amague is not understood as such by your partner, then the dance can perish.

Tango is the dance born from togetherness and the need to express its passion. Togetherness is the art to tango and its need of uniqueness and space for creativity within individuality.

What support do we stimulate or find so as to build genuine and long-lasting connections in this Internet-network culture that simultaneously facilitates getting lightly connected and easily disconnected with our emotions and other beings? How do we dance in a culture that does not value the art of being in company?

“The relationship to one's fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one's striving. The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings.” (Franz Kafka)

Inés

Our Present: Living or Surviving?

Dwelling in the past can many times act as a shield that delays us from challenges, responsibilities, and commitment that our present feeds from.  Sheltering our  lamentations and dissatisfaction in the past can easily transform in a disengaged approach to our inconsistencies and fallacies, distancing us from change (the past moments will always feel better than our present!).
On the other hand, denying our past can cost our happiness and emotional health a high price. Not being able to make peace with hurtful background experiences will suffocate our choices at some point, without notice. Saving face to the past can easily make our biggest dreams panic. Past situations that have caused profound emotional wounds cannot be circumvented because they will subjugate the sense of meaning and purpose of our present.

But, how do we recognize ourselves denying our past or getting stuck in it from the need of embracing past open ends to complete ourselves? Psychologists Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks ask “what past stops do we need to experience to refresh our present?”

Whenever embarking in a new phase, I had always chosen to treasure the best memories and continue without looking back. This perspective helps to disconnect from nostalgia and overcome pain since it makes the backpack lighter to grip the present with full energy. However, during my trip to Argentina, I have discovered that open ends of the past with our loved moments and people need our attention to renew the vows with the guiding standards that have happily built our identities. Yet, how often do we leave them unattended?

Sometimes, closing the loose ends require profound conversations. Other times, those ends simply close with a loving look, a strong hug, a smooth pat, or a shared laughing. 

Meeting my eighty year old grandmother after 15 years, connecting back through fun and authentic dialogues with friends, and sharing the complicity of our stories with my sister put me in contact with values that refreshed and repositioned my search.  These moments have the capacity of reminding us how good it feels to live in connection with affection within a support system, to be in communication with our needs and profound desires, and to express freely within a framework of knowledge, tolerance, and understanding.Our state of inner harmony nurtures our positive state of freedom, and our inner taskmasters such as ego and fear fade away regenerating our capacity to feel alive.

Living from the past is a barrier against growth. Covering the past can sink our future in unhappiness.  Refreshing from the past let our present live more focused and healthier. Is our past letting us survive in the present? Or, is our past nurturing us to live complete?

“It takes a special kind of courage to face and deal with our past incompletions. Often these incompletions are the most significant barrier to expressing our full creativity in the present. Go on and hunt for any areas of incompletion, large or small, and you will not be disappointed. A burst of creativity will often follow the completion of some long left issue. Clearing up an incompletion gives you a feeling of aliveness that you can get nowhere else.” (Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks)

Inés

Desde los afectos

¿Cómo hacerte saber que siempre hay tiempo?
Que uno tiene que buscarlo y dárselo…
Que nadie establece normas, salvo la vida…
Que la vida sin ciertas normas pierde formas…
Que la forma no se pierde con abrirnos…
Que abrirnos no es amar indiscriminadamente…
Que no está prohibido amar…
Que también se puede odiar…
Que la agresión porque sí, hiere mucho…
Que las heridas se cierran…
Que las puertas no deben cerrarse…
Que la mayor puerta es el afecto…
Que los afectos, nos definen…
Que definirse no es remar contra la corriente…
Que no cuanto más fuerte se hace el trazo, más se dibuja…
Que negar palabras, es abrir distancias…
Que encontrarse es muy hermoso…
Que el sexo forma parte de lo hermoso de la vida…
Que la vida parte del sexo…
Que el por qué de los niños, tiene su por qué…
Que querer saber de alguien, no es sólo curiosidad…
Que saber todo de todos, es curiosidad malsana…
Que nunca está de más agradecer…
Que autodeterminación no es hacer las cosas solo…
Que nadie quiere estar solo…
Que para no estar solo hay que dar…
Que para dar, debemos recibir antes…
Que para que nos den también hay que saber pedir…
Que saber pedir no es regalarse…
Que regalarse en definitiva no es quererse…
Que para que nos quieran debemos demostrar qué somos…
Que para que alguien sea, hay que ayudarlo…
Que ayudar es poder alentar y apoyar…
Que adular no es apoyar…
Que adular es tan pernicioso como dar vuelta la cara…
Que las cosas cara a cara son honestas…
Que nadie es honesto porque no robe…
Que cuando no hay placer en las cosas no se está viviendo…
Que para sentir la vida hay que olvidarse que existe la muerte…
Que se puede estar muerto en vida..
Que se siente con el cuerpo y la mente…
Que con los oídos se escucha…
Que cuesta ser sensible y no herirse…
Que herirse no es desangrarse…
Que para no ser heridos levantamos muros…
Que sería mejor construir puentes…
Que sobre ellos se van a la otra orilla y nadie vuelve…
Que volver no implica retroceder…
Que retroceder también puede ser avanzar…
Que no por mucho avanzar se amanece más cerca del sol…

¿Cómo hacerte saber que nadie establece normas, salvo la vida?

Mario Benedetti
(English version)

Losing or winning?

                                                            (National Geographic)

A man was walking home and observed that a woman was unceasingly looking for something on the grass, below a lamppost. Intrigued by what the woman was doing, he approaches her with the intention to help and asked: “Excuse me, do you need help?” “Yes, I have lost my house keys” she replies. So, the man starts searching with her. After a long while of searching with no results, the man inquires: “Are you sure you lost the keys on this spot?” The woman replies “Yes. I dropped the keys on the opposite street.” With great surprise, the man says “so, why are you looking for the keys here instead of searching in front?” “I search for them here because it is lighter, I know this place better, and it is more comfortable.” (Hindu tale - Jaime Jaramillo)

When in the search for happiness, we follow what our knowledge indicates as being functional. Sometimes the results of our search make us feel alive, centered, good, and let us build on the future. However, many other times, our search lets us get away with unhealthy behavioral and emotional patterns, in which the available and visible mental tools tend to be learned mechanisms, rules, and social expectations that respond to fears and that have silently been editing our lives and our encounters.

Appealing to what it is available and seems to be functioning is a safe and self-justifiable resource that prevents us from getting lost into the unknown, which can make us face the uncomfortable mirror of what we can discover inside us, and we also avoid dealing with the success that could overwhelm our structures.

We can clearly hear that something is making noise in us. Anyway, we let unhappiness gets empowered to sink its claws and circularly generate deeper feelings of frustration and discomfort. We realize something is missing but we are not at disposition to get in deeper touch with ourselves, our past, and our present. We negate our reality with activities, things, and disengaged attitudes so as to diminish the pain. However, when we never stop to feel if we are making decisions from our true desires and genuine freedom, we are backfiring at our integrity and sense of completeness and wholeness. Why do we overlook if we know we are numbing our happiness? Why do we make decisions that sooner or later will make us suffer? Why do we unconsciously prefer suffering?

Knowledge comes to rescue us and make us feel the adrenaline of the winners, so it turns harder to detect that we are living on aphrodisiacs that are silently hurting our long lasting well being and fostering a fake encounter with authentic success. In our internal fight, our defense mechanisms win and our fears placate bringing a sense of tranquility. However, "this tranquility" is just emotional freedom somnolence that meticulously kidnaps our desires to sabotage our capability of making happier choices. What can impede us from boycotting our happiness?

It is vital to awaken from the somnolence and confront our guiding standards and put them to trial. These mechanisms work best in darkness and only crystallize when faced and chased in brave, deep, and fearless manners. How often do we question our judgments, our views, our perspectives, our sensations away from the surface and more in connection with a genuine search that will let us authentically embrace what makes us feel truly alive and well?

Happiness and success are composed by many other factors such as health, enthusiasm for life, integrity, authentic relationships, inner sense of peace and prosperity, wisdom, freedom, creative power, social, emotional and psychological stability. The commitment to these ideals give our personal stories direction and focus, protection, trust, and reassurance that we are feeding the real us.

Surely, a genuine search powerfully pushes unexplored emotions and inner places that inexorably will revolutionize our life and our set ways of dealing with desires. This search will probably make us shake and doubt when transitioning through the darkness but, as we go deeper, the pillars of our true happiness will become visible and will give us the security of having found stable ground and full power against unhappiness and mediocrity. Most probably, this search won't give place to recrimination for what we missed to live, failed to love, or feared to face; on the contrary, it will give us the tranquility of mind and heart essential to feel deliciously complete.

Are we being the creators of our happiness or are we editors that obediently unvoice our true desires? Are we losing or winning against our fears?

“The same mechanisms that produce excitement also produce fear, and any fear can be transformed into excitement by breathing into it. On the other hand, excitement turns into fear quickly if you hold your breath…as a physical tool of denial.” (Fritz Perls & Gay Hendricks)

Inés

Choices or Traps?

                                                                    Flickr image

Hippolytus was a fine young man, handsome, strong and a great athlete, and Phaedra had strong romantic feelings for him. Hippolytus rejected Phaedra's advances. Phaedra fell hurt and asked Theseus, the great Athenian hero, for help. Theseus took revenge by using a curse, one of three which had been given to him by the god of the sea, Poseidon. Why, when we feel hurt, showing ourselves vulnerable is perceived as injurious? What defensive mechanisms do we call in our discourses to activate when we feel pain? Do those mechanisms really alleviate our feelings or create more damage?

Showing our feelings and desires can be detrimental to the image of the strong and infallible person that world finds attractive. Through language we give ourselves control over the vulnerabilities we do not want others to witness. So, to avoid rejection and uncomfortable situations that hurt our most treasured "psychological immune system" needs, we shape an image that connects with a protected notion of the self within a social construction, setting critical distance so as to shield from the risks of shame and to feed with the pleasures of ego. In consequence, we give freedom to the bad character inside us. This character can bully when something results against our desires, can ‘defend’ us against the anger of failure, and has the ability to make the other person disappear in response to our self-esteem. But, by building discourses out of stereotypical scenarios that respond to unreal feelings, narrow views, and unmindful connections, the other person turns into our scapegoat and we ditch in pain.

Undoubtedly, we do not happily transform ourselves and our connections in the battlefield. So, what roles would move us beyond in building genuine communication that reflects our real emotions and discovers the true other?

We can only move beyond and grow if we hack our rules of engagement and are able to show humanity instead of ineffability. Only through a mindful communication that recognizes our weaknesses and identifies our faults and deficiencies, we reach out and enrich from the value of being. Mindful communication is solely built through the capacity to choose to undress pride, fears, and ego to show ourselves clean of selfish mechanisms that can only trap us in unhappiness.

In interpersonal communication, the only possible connection is the human connection. What conscious or unconscious traps do we need to recognize in our communication to equip ourselves for happier choices?

Inés

What is your favorite place?

                                                                        Google image
Life experiences leave marks that can change our routes or put us back on our axis.

The good experiences feed our identity: they enlarge our wings and make us feel stronger, healthier and happier. The impulse they bring empowers us to plan, project, take action and risk, bulge our dreams, and even love more. But what about bad experiences? How do we deal with them? What places do we choose to go when experiences bring pain?

Hurtful experiences ruthlessly overwhelm our emotions, directing us to refuge in where we can cry without restraints, hide away from further sorrow, breath out from asphyxiating reality, feel sad with sense of righteousness, and harbor our integrity and dignity. These places provide us with temporary protection while we bandage the wounds and recuperate. But, what happens when these protective mechanisms cease to be temporary shelters to become our lifestyles? How many times do these mechanisms transform in dark places in where we constantly stand to justify our fears?

When we are not able to recognize our protective mechanisms as such, then we adopt them as modum vivendum because they function as analgesics. So, pain metamorphose into fears that easily camouflage behind a bad temper to put distance between us and the others, or they entrench under excessive consumption and restless activity to silence the anguish with adrenaline, or they nestle in isolation or remoteness to detach ourselves from reality, or they warrant as our bad luck to find quick meaning.

In the long run, these inner rooms over-furnish with agony and ignite desperation, anger, and desolation. Unconsciously, we slowly debilitate our freedom and essential pillars. And, our capability of choosing happiness trembles.

Many bad experiences take years to resolve and they call for laborious and subversive distressing processes. However, we will only heal if we are willing to detour from the claws of our dark places towards points of light from where we are able to clearly identify the best construction tools to make our lives healthier and happier.

Happiness is an everyday choice. Many times we say “I cannot”...but would it happen if we could?

Inés

On Valentine's Day...

Desmayarse, atreverse, estar furioso,
áspero, tierno, liberal, esquivo,
alentado, mortal, difunto, vivo,
leal, traidor, cobarde y animoso:

no hallar fuera del bien centro y reposo,
mostrarse alegre, triste, humilde,
altivo,enojado, valiente, fugitivo,
satisfecho, ofendido, receloso:

huir el rostro al claro desengaño,
beber veneno por licor süave,
olvidar el provecho, amar el daño:

creer que el cielo en un infierno cabe;
dar la vida y el alma a un desengaño,
¡esto es amor! quien lo probó lo sabe.

Felix Lope de Vega
(1562-1635)

Should we do to feel or should we feel to do?

                                                                Google image
Emotions such as love, joy, hope, happiness help us set priorities and find value in life.

However, we live in a society that tackles emotions, privileging the cognitive in our relationships. Consequently, we find ourselves driven to translate emotions just as a mere form of selfish entertainment or pleasurable sensations, detaching emotions from the self and the other. The result is a high level of dissatisfaction.

Perhaps this is only a reflection of the utility oriented practical culture of replaceable things and no contracts that we are living through, in which emotional beings are usually perceived as weak.

A culture that seduces us to operate at emotional high: we need to feel love to love, and love is real when it is generated by orgasmic sensations. We need to feel materially rewarded for work, and work is fun when generated by monetary returns. We need to feel good to approach others, and the moment is worth when generated by intensity.

Instability takes over and pushes to get lost in an internal roller-coaster between anxiety and guilt that never fulfills, feeling empty soon after the adrenaline lowers. The need to chase the gratification ego turns infallible, running the risk of it coming back a costly task.

Emotions need to take the place they deserve. Underestimating emotions just temporarily plasters insecurities. Only by unbalancing our emotional mechanisms we can rediscover balance.

Our emotions will awake and move when reaching out of our nutshells. But, it is tempting to scrutinize the consequences before approaching at more personal levels. The trauma of emotional life and its sterility are such that we paralyze at the possibility of becoming overwhelmed and flooded by internal realities and emotional engagement that are out of our control.

Giving the emotional life the place it deserves will activate the capacity to heal, to transform, and to connect with meaning. Involvement and genuine connections help juggle impulses, feelings, sensations, and emotions to resolve them, to close wounds, and to give each what they deserve so as to build a genuine construction of the self and reality.

“All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.” - Rainer Maria Rilke

Inés

A Relationship with Silence

                                                          Picture by Google Images

As soon as I get up every morning, I turn on the radio. This morning I tried to be silent. Still, I read through my emails, news, Google pages. I have to admit I felt uncomfortable and challenged. The impulse of filling and shutting off silence was very strong. Yet, my mind did not rest trying to jump from thought to thought. After around two hours, and after convincing myself that I had to be informed, I turned on the radio. I could realize though that silence cooperated with being more productive: I could focus deeper and worked faster (is it because I wanted to end up the discomfort of the situation?)

Silence helped me unlock my personality traits to meet the true ‘yo-feelings’ in the past; however, I discontinued the practice due to work obligations, expectations, and responsibilities (excuses?). Since practicing being silent is scary, because it means dealing with emotions that have no evident logical answers, I tried to practice it through composure: ‘not talking’ when emotions want to jump over for answers to understand reality in a grasp of desperation (although sometimes it is inevitable and end up letting the most immature emotions shout).

Silence could be complete absence or presence of communication. It has many forms, functions, and typologies determined by cultural norms, situational norms, and individual traits. Silence can be used to voice seduction, to establish leadership, to build control, to reduce pain, to ground, to guide the spirit, to fence our emotions, to dissent, to generate action, to show interest, to keep a secret, to express avoidance, to imply agreement, to express politeness, to refrain anger, to manipulate, to reveal thoughts, to show respect, recognition, courtesy, and emotional neutrality, and many more.

What traits, fears, and realities could silence bring out about me if I do not negate it?

Well, silence is strongly eloquent and powerful; it is a meaningful component of social and human interaction and development. However, Western cultures inculcate a negative connotation towards silence. We are educated to feel uncomfortable among silence; we do not know how to handle it or how to relate to it positively. For us Westerners, the word is a source of wisdom, a sign of intelligence and attractiveness, a sign of maturity and social standard. Consequently, we tend to quench silence because its eloquence puts us in internal places that we are not accustomed to walk, to face, to deal with. And, because silence is revealing, we deal with it at a hierarchical level instead of at a democratic level: we input silence norms of conversation and we do not let it talk because it could be hurtful, invasive, overwhelming.

Experiencing silence brings a healing aspect that transforms, redefines, and repositions our pillars toward happier mental, spiritual, and emotional constructions by generating questions that play on our real image that so many times a day we miss and do not want to deal with. Silence must be a honest encounter that comes from our inner most privileged emotions, thoughts, identities bringing liberation, self-being, guidance, sense of peace. How to start?

“Don’t talk unless you can improve silence” – Jorge Luis Borges

Inés

Mirrors & Ghosts

                                                  Picture by National Geographic

Mirrors & Ghosts

South Beach on New Year’s Eve was flooded with bodies radiating excitement, clothing to tempt the emotions, voices that challenged the spirit, movements that spread passionate energy, looks in search for transgression.

But, I wondered what each of those spirits really wished for 2012 when they reached home and met alone with their mirrors?

We dressed with different identities throughout our day. We are friends, daughters/sons, siblings, neighbors, lovers, students, buyers, workers. Our identities tend to be noisy. We make noise to push the scars deep inside; we know they could jump at any moment to take care of themselves. We make noise to cover our fears of being rejected, ridiculed, and criticized. We make noise to cover our fears of dreams that could turn into frustrations, fears of realizing we are alone, fears of going for things or people that are not socially successful, fears of being politically incorrect, fears of being portrayed just common, fears of being our vulnerable being, fears of having scary desires, fears of finding our voices.

What would it happen if we took off our ‘suits’ and we dressed only with ourselves? How comfortable would we feel? How would our façades transform?

We have the capacity of building close relationships with others, but many times the relationship with ourselves is impersonal and distanced, full of obstacles and masks. How many times our bodies miss the personal connection with our most profound desires, fears, dreams? How many times do we dress them?

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

What are our most ‘valuable’ masks? Are we prepared to put them down?

Inés

What is technology?

Technology is the clothespin. Technology is a bicycle chain. Technology is the birth of a new industry which could not have been born without the metal fish book, or the polished glass mirror, or the transistor, or the liquid crystal display. Technology is applying a new solution to an old problem. Sometimes the new solution is so elegant that people cease to think about the old solution. Sometimes people cling to what they know, to what they have tested, to what has worked for them.

Technology is about change. It changes the way we work. It changes the way we communicate. It changes the way we think. Perhaps most importantly, it changes the way we change. Technology challenges us not only to change the way we do things, but to decide whether the way we do things is important to us. It begs us to consider our history, the way things were.

 It forces us to wonder what we lose when we gain.

Perhaps it is technology, or the changes associated with it, that make things seems more complicated: more choices, more subsets of choices,more information - always more information. We wonder about the best way to do something rather than how to do something.

(Sebastian Foti)