At The Beginning Of A New Day

Another one of those days which begin as I like: stories with friends in sunny places on a working day. You get the feeling of an unauthorized get away and you feel the freedom of chit-chat without the interruption of phone calls and emails. 

I was gonna meet up with a friend and I chose this place I have only visited once before. It was hidden on a street where you can hardly find a parking place, but this was a lucky morning where they had free parking places right in front. I decided still to leave my car on a parallel street and to take a walk on the lovely street and enjoy the beautiful houses in Floreasca. I reached the place and a very friendly Italian accent voice greeted me with "Good morning!" sitting at a far away table. That smile makes the sun come out and makes one feel extremely confident to greet the world.  It doesn't even matter if you know that person or if he just broke a few moments of his time to start your smile. I sat at the table and ordered a hot chocolate. Small tables all over the place, friendly atmosphere and together with the cultural diversity I can say this is a place to come back to.

Then the stories started and from there on we could have been anywhere because we forgot about space. That kind of conversation that takes from time to time and place to place and starts your engines with unloading your ideas, exploring initiatives and future plans from different cultures. 

This is how all mornings should start. With a coffee, hot chocolate, tea and drunk during a story with beautiful people and cultural diversity shared to the max.  

The place was called Grano, downtown Bucharest, and the talks were about Cricket, education and religion. All these can be so easily explored that I am beginning to believe we don't know how to make our mornings beautiful. I would love to start every working morning with a tea with a dear friend and to expose our new ideas so then I can start working and putting my plans into action.

Our Old Dacia

Today I watched the same accident happen as last month with the same type of car: old Dacia in big smoke in the middle of the day on a main street and boulevard. The diver pulled the wheel and hit the limiting pillars in the middle of the road and stopped. He was carrying windows and had printed on all sides of the car a company's name and the phone numbers. Maybe the driver was hired or maybe he was the owner, anyhow he was driving a car older than 15 years and  which had little investment lately. I wonder if the revision was made for this car or the technical inspection. He got out of the car, slightly panicked, and threw his lighted cigarette on the cement turning it off by stepping on it. Then two policemen on bikes passed by, but none of them stopped. I am thinking that the rest of us, the drivers in the traffic, could have jumped with a fire extinguisher, but I didn't know very well what happened to the car just like the rest of the people next to me. Anyway the whole preoccupation with smart phone leaves few eyes present to witness the smoke. I moved on under the invitation of the green light. Further on, I met other 2 police cars with policemen and they were just standing there quietly. I am curious if this time they have not put something on the news.
Last time I was coming out on the parallel line of Aviatorilor boulevard and got stuck in traffic. It was funny that the main boulevard was empty of cars and looking back I noticed an old Dacia smoking heavily. Then I got out of the car to see what's going on in front of us. A driver in front of me on the only line had stepped down to give a helping hand with a fire extinguisher. Obviously the owner of Dacia didn't even have that in his car. I wonder if he had the technical inspection. And I have asked for some explanations to the driver in front of me about how he imagines that it's smart to stand by and block all of us there and be sure victims in case of an explosion. Then he moved and they gave up the staring. In the evening I watched the news to see if there was any word. Nothing. 
They keep feeding information about Romanians loving second hand cars. I am sure many could get new cars through "RABLA" and a small loan from the bank, but the Romanian people loves leaving things unfinished. And that's what's killing us often. This "leave it for tomorrow", "don't fix it yet", this ignorance to the problem we pass by and stare and the lesson that has no effects. Each time we wait for the fateful "bad luck" to explain indolence, not caring and greed.

On Literature

For a while I have done some book translations. And because the only language I master as good as Romanian is English, I cannot translate other than American authors, very sough for these days, because these are the ones who are intensly awarded/published/promoted. It looks like they are the ones most translated in Romania also these days. And I like to believe that I have made a pretty accurate idea about that they write and about the american society. So I have decided to put a few ideas on paper about this literature. 

First of all, most sought for are motivational books. Being a population with a major historical challenge, without any homogeneity and culture, and this thing is noticed in their constant need for guidance and idolatry. I cannot say that these books are not good or well written, but there is obvious truth which myself, as European born and raised under the sign of a century lasting culture which is running through my blood, I notice them even before reading them in a book.

Second goes fiction novels. These ones merge into the same themes depending on what’s good to sell and what’s catchy. I don’t believe this is how you build literature. You need a diversity of themes because otherwise you limit the reader to read only about these themes. Then he will try more in his real life. Also this way posterity will not get a real idea about our society’s life/culture/mentality. The fact that now there are many people fascinated with the new imaginary and that their passion for vampires is so high and deeply marketed that they come to identify themselves with the characters, without realising that the beauty of fantasy literature lies in the ability to expand your imagination beyond reality without even noticing the expansion into that world, doesn’t mean that this is what our society is about. I like to read fantasy literature with a higher degree of difficulty than the one with supernatural characters living like humans, but it looks like we are somehow merged into this mass literature.

It has also it’s good sides this literature. If you read an American recent novel you will notice the vocabulary exercise you are exposed to. It looks like the authors make an effort to use as many synonims for the same word. And this thing leades inevitably to a development of your vocabulary as a reader without even noticing the effort.

Scariest thing is that I find in the present fantasy literature influences from writers who worked over a century ago and who out of the great mass of American writers should have been long surpassed. Don’t get me wrong because I don’t believe all is new is better than the old one or that new presumably means evolution. But I strongly believe that ourselves as human beings and society evolve and therefore the culture should do the same. But if now you get writings like Asimov, what will there be left for anthropologists to analyse about our times? Almost nothing, we will probably be stuck all in two centuries of Postmodernist Medieval Times and the authors we now read and praise so highly will be forgotten. 

In my opinion we need to outbound our horizons and we need to pick better to stimulate the authors to give us more out of their imagination. 

How To Be Free

This is the second book I read from the same author which impressed me a while back and which changed my perspective over my life completely. It’s true that I have become more lazy after reading How To Be Idle, but if the world knew how good it feels not to burn energy for every insignifiant thing happening around you, that’s how everyone would deal with panic, stress and fear. Nothing is forever and as long as we are exhausted by the thought that working as hard as we can to make God knows what “interesting” deed, we will miss out on important moments of our lives, we cannot even react. But if we still hang on to this rhythm, we will wake up alone one day, friendless, depressed and suicidal. And because I don’t want to end up like that, after reading the two books (How to Be Idle, How To Be Free), I have started practicing the “preaching”. This is how I have discovered that it’s true what they say: the world doesn’t collapse if I don’t work madly against time from 9 to 18 or 9 to 23. Because, after all, you don’t work for your good life, but against your health. Moreover, you don’t even realise when you lose track of sleepless hours and when you have become a slave. This is not the way you should continue existing. We are humans and we have the right to take a break and do something we like with satisfaction of it. So I encourage you to start doing so while you have the chance. Throw out the watch and make things as good as you feel it’s right and so in time all will turn out great. After a while you will become free and you will realise time passes much harder if you stop watching time and it’s passing...

Bucharest, my city

I love this completely upside down world we live in. 

Every day I pass by new wholes on the streets, but net to them, most of the times, there are new buildings rising up, whether for offices or for living. And no one seems to cross their minds that the problem is actually this: we are certainly sinking, the paradox is through the tall buildings we are helping speed up the sinking process. 

And there are also the street borders, constantly renewed, while the green spaces remain untrimmed and the wild plants growing from each old building left for no use. And the parks which are also new released or not cared for. We live in a world of contrasts which we digest daily with its ups and downs. 

Walking is also a challinge, cause we have borders but no pathway. But I love this city, I love it because I can take as many steps as I want without worrying no one is watching. I like it that when I get home, I have some eyes watching over me from an upper floor. I am glad even that a person from above is watching me, otherwise I would feel too close to the sky.

This is my city and I love it as it is. I am glad to have been born in this sand and dust crowded place. I am glad to have learned to beautify it with irony and sarcasm. Otherwise I would have definitely gotten sick... of it...

Form 112

I took part one day in an initiative to help a young person sick of cancer get it’s help from the Romanian state to treatment in Europe. And after we have all gathered there at the Health Ministry with many, many, many signatures for the cause, we left without a solution. But out of all this experience I have personally realised that there is a big mistake in the approach and response. I don’t believe this 112 or any other form should stop you from your fundamental right to live free as long as you have to live. And if you are sick of cancer and you have to take medications you have just lost many years of life and many moments of the days left (the tiredness afterwards, the sickness and not to count the hours spent in the doctor’s office). So 112 or whatever its name is should be unlimited signed off. 

Let’s be serious! What are they afraid of? It’s not like a Lazarus would rise from the grave and come spend hours in the European hospitals just to charge the Romanian state.

Fantasy Literature

A visit at the Carturesti Bookstores and you quickly realise that the world is still fascinated with fantasy stories. Maybe because the reality we see every day seems so dark that it’s hard to face it without a story with a bit of hope. Instead of facing the bosses, you enjoy reading about heroes you admire them for standup to the evil forces from a distance. And that is how fantasy becomes highly appreciated. 

And still why is our reality so dark that all of us prefer fantasy?

Why do we like naming the bad, the dark and dress-up the kitsch? Why not trying to beautify everything towards a fantasy we love?

These are questions I cannot answer. Maybe just take the fact that people buy books because of their covers and use them for their covers. And then it explains the lack of interest in bettering our lives. 

But maybe people still read books and there are dreamers out there who can make our lives more beautiful every day...

I am looking for a dreamer or more to share dreams about a beautiful world we could have around us?

Anyone?

The Age of Selfishness

In a world where information becomes more accessible every day, people learn to self-educate themselves. So each one of us will be an artist, critic and in the same time we will continue to be a consumer. Our taste is cultivated through a tradition hardly transmitted with some communist infiltrations and a western dream which is still alive. And our taste seems to influence somehow the true and educated creators. This fact cannot help lowering the world culture, interest and implication. We develop an age of selfishness, of independence, of individualism. This proves we haven’t learned anything from the world history. People have come to evolve in the moment they have united, the moment they have overcome their city limits and the moment the cultural conflict has given birth to a medium or long term compromise. 

Sadly we can evaluate we are in a reiteration of Medieval Age. Luckily, hope is still alive, that even after us, there will be some brilliant minds who will know to judge our times as a preparation for the next humanity jump. 

Our selfishness may head again towards humanity together with the realisation that individually we are nothing. And our art will then be considered as a step to a future age of powerful feeling as we cannot meet at this stage. 

Beauty

Somehow deep down our hearts we feel the beauty of those around us. And I must say we unconsciously like certain people or certain things. It's actually surprising that we don't show that in a way that you can explain it. I have tried to put it somehow in words and the problem remains that we don't really know what to choose from our feelings. We try to find reasons where argument is more of a sentimental order. 
In all my education I have learned that there are three stages of a work of art analysis: the first one is the superficial recognition, the second one is based on the personal interpretation and the third one refers to the connection between our knowledge and the meaning it catches. Maybe we function the same way when recognising beauty around us. We try at first to establish the subject, then we recognise the specific group and then on the third level we contextualise  it based on our experience: beautiful of not. 
Beauty is somehow closer to our heart, so it needs to be similar to previous choices. And beauty is still too deep to be mentioned, noticed and expressed. 
May we find as much to judge so we feel beautiful and surrounded by beauty every day!

Every Day I Joggle… Like the Man Next to Me…

I was educated that I need to joggle on daily basis with all sorts of tasks. And it always seemed fun to do this. I noticed since very early age this constant pendulation of mom from bathroom to kitchen, from clothes to the playful cooking machine, from one room to the other and always with the thought for the others. I wanted to become this busy bee as she used to be because she seemed to be my hero. 

On the opposite side, starting with dad, the man next to me has always been quite cerebral and has tried to take things one at a time. He always proved to me that he could make things better this way. It became sort of frustrating. But mom would take me by her side and told me that us, women, are always amazing exactly because we joggle with all these tasks and that we can do what "they" do even better. 

Unfortunately things didn’t remain as mom would present them. Unfortunately capitalism brought each employee o challenge that our body is not yet fully prepared for. Tasks continue rising. Panic is bigger. 

In the new context, as a woman, I try to joggle with all the tasks at once like in a loom. While he knows how to take each project at a time and not become stressed… Until the corporation hits him too. But still he knows how to fight for his life beyond work. I stress, I panic. He has sorted everything out and he carries with dignity a cross he knows how to even hide behind a smile and a detachment. 

Work lays ever more pressure on “the ant’s shoulders", and they, men, start to joggle just like us with multiple tasks. Maybe they weren’t taught to do this, but they manage to handle it. And I watch simply amazed and fascinated by the calm and the adapting capacity. 

I become histerical and try to eliminate the stress and frustration I feel towards the "unjustice-hero" and his companions, but he remains always calm and knows how to treat things with diplomacy. 

He learns to sustain his point of view with arguments, and I raise the histeria. 

Everyday, personally, I wish to be more the man next to me. 

At the end of the day I wish to become the lady in distress… To find him, the man next to me, who can save me… Who can explain to me once again that things must be taken one at a time so you don’t mess them around… And that’s how I fall asleep calm with the solution my dad always had for the trouble me or mom made… take each task at a time…. The thought, that the man next to me is still different than me, gives me hope… 

Time for my own SELF

I discovered or better said rediscovered recently that burden which I have seen on the shoulders of my parents in the context of communist observation. What I mean by my observation I mean in a tender way the extremely undemocratic gesture which assumes invasion of the private space. 
And no wonder that we live under the impression that democracy means also invading of private space and that somehow we become VIPs if we are constantly under surveillance. I went once in a house where everything was closely supervised. And I was amused that each look I threw in the corners of the house, in the fake ceiling, in the mirrors on the corridors. I was amused that I knew I am nobody and yet those people were wasting their time watching a nobody. And I felt a little bit safe with so many people "watching" my back. I had a driver and a mistress who took care of all we wished for. And I had the seaside at a glance away and the beach and the waves. And I didn't feel threatened, but it had been my decision to go there and I wanted to experiment that feeling. My freedom to choose to throw myself in this experience. And then everything was justified by a will to overcome the limits, to see what such a house is like, an unjustified curiosity to test the evil before he became part of my universe. 
The time I want to spend with myself and my faces is a private time which nobody has the right to watch. This is part of my being which I decide to express in an intimate way, private and away from foreign eyes. Same thing happens with the phone. It's a mean of communication, not a tool to draw a psychological profile. If we are all followed, it means they are leaving from the premises that we are all felons.
I believe even more that my privacy is invaded if I am not warned by this. 

Safety has some limitations. The limits we must establish and we are mature enough to consider which is that private space which should be deprived of the foreign eyes and ears. 
Freedom means you can unravel without leaving traces, without having an impact on somebody's work, without being judged for your deeds. 

Freedom doesn't mean constraints and worries which we fell when the Big Brother watches over us. 

Big Brother doesn't make you a star but it invades in a brutal way and very aggressively the private life!

The Aspiring Innocence

The impact of aspirational was never trully evaluated or identified as a potential risk over the development of our society. 

We've always walked ahead in search of beauty, in association of new with a prosperous life. But a brief look back will make us understand and love more the power of traditional and old as heritage. If we realise that old can still have life, we will manage to still transmit the sustainability and perpetuation as two important life attributes. So we shouldn't wonder at the ephemerality and momentarity of each gesture. The "fast generation", as we should call those coming after us, will always be superficial and will rapidly forget of the impact of each event. 

But transmitting some attributes, distribution of a responsibility will manage to bring most back to "slow" the human kind.

And the moment in which the aspirational becomes adorable is a recent discovery in the lost look of a man in the traffic of a Bucharest mall. A man with poor clothes at the KFC order desk asks the cashier if they have something to drink. The cashier, a little bit surprised, told him they have Cola, Fanta, Sprite. The man verbally chose a Fanta and also excited took out his brand new credit card from his wallet to pay. He was so happy for the 5,9 lei spent via pos to the american giant that you could swear he had won the elections if you looked into his eyes. And the man was happy he could drink a Fanta in an aspirational environment paying with this new tool everybody uses. Most probably that smile and enthusiasm will stay for a long time in my memory. The lesson of life was a scary one: the exploitation of innocence to the aspirational shows us we fall often in that trap if we are already card users, delighted by the new "tool".

We are sure victims in front of advertising we embrace as a standard of life. 

For all the rest it sure is MasterCard.

Everyday I Become More the Man Next to Me

The society we are living in has taught us that women need to take care of themselves. But ironically enough, we weren’t raised to take care of ourselves. My mom and my grannies have always taught me that girls should wear skirts, dresses, and constantly be preocupied by making things more beautiful and taking care of the household. Yet all these teachings got lost somewhere along the way. 

From the recent years’ experience, from a close observation of the opposite sex, it always seemed like HE provokes me to be in a constant competition with him. But judging things even deeper, I believe that the competition with the opposite sex has started from early school days. They could be relaxed and comfortable with themselves, and we had to be posh, wake up earlier, stay stiff in our perfect outfits. And why? 

So one day I decided I had to succeed in being just as cool and nice as them. And I believe it was also a man who told me a secret in the unsatisfied 16th year of my life. He told me that it doesn’t actually matter how you look, but how the others perceive you. And if you are the ugliest person, but to your audience, you are very sure of yourself, you will be percieved as beautiful. I looked at him and I suddenly saw all his flaws beyond his self-confidence. And then I understood the secret of the opposite sex is exactly this self contentment. They had their own uncertainties at that age, but they somehow knew how to behave "like men". And since then I learned attitude is the one I have to race with. 

Now if I think deeper into it, I realise that my love for trainers, basketball trainers and other sport shoes is coming also from the admiration toward them, the ones who manage always to impress through self confidence, through trust and powerful gestures. And I decided that in a man’s world it’s not necessarly good to wear high heels, to be helpless and to be a constant cry for help. It’s not in their genes to take care. At least not in those I see around me. Yes, my father used to help mom walk on the street, he knew how to hold mom by the hand, to offer her his strong arm and to make her feel good for being helpless. But there aren’t such men in a world in which us, women, constantly fight for equal rights. They don’t fight to show us they can take care of kids and they can clean up the house. For all these they have Master Card. In cooking they are for sure much better than us. 

And I believe the competition has continued when it came to the technical revolution. I noticed how my best friend had a safe place among guys because she mastered this new field called technology. So, I had to know something about that. It’s not ladylike, but it’s nice and pleasant to be there in the middle of discussions. And their discussions would always be relaxed, without passion or egos. They are always at the same level. There’s no rooster in the conversation. 

And there are a few more things that we stress about too much. Men have a style, that no matter where they go, who they meet, what they talk about, they don’t mind laughing. Us, women, we try always to be aware of how we laugh, why, about who, if the subject is according to our mood and so on. 

And the mood for us is a very severe thing. We are actually constantly unhappy, discontent, willing for more. And I wonder why can’t we just be happy with what we have? I mean what can be so bad that we cannot be thankful for what we have? The cave will become empty? There will be no more provisions?

Hey, but we could go hunting! If they can do it, why couldn’t we?

Every day, with every new challenge, I am becoming more the man next to me. And it seems sometimes that my shadow becomes manly. And that doesn’t seem like a good challenge. I like the man next to me to be in flash and bones, to have a firm voice who knows to impose some limits to my oscilant behaviour, to know me when I am mad and to know his part is more important than my competitive play. But I believe it’s very hard to admit we are vulnerable and we need a little guidance in life even at this age. We are proud, while they know that if today was not a good day for hunt, tomorrow the sun will shine again. To us the sunset seems the end of a cycle, and the empty glass is getting dry at the end of a cycle, otherwise you waste a good wine. 

This constant move is becoming tiring! Let’s admit it, we are trying, but it’s not always perfect and it’s useless. They will always be next to us. Closer or further their part is essential. I would take off my hat, but I would be just like them, so I will take a bow and hold my hand up for a gentle kiss and I will close by hoping those who will read these lines will understand the essence of the destructive fight of our society. 

The Opposite Attracts

Personally, I like the perfect shapes, I like everything to shine, I like the colour explosion. And yet, on a trip to the Garbage Dump next to Bucharest, I took much more photos than if I would have had I stopped in the "Museum of perfect shapes". That is because the perfection I admire, I try to build, while the rest remains full of a poetry I notice only when I see. 

It looks like the apparent accessibility of new, associated with the image of perfection, makes us bored with beauty. So we started searching for beauty in the abnormal, in all that is deviated and in everything that doesn’t fit  our rules. It’s fascinating to us this aesthetic of ugliness. And that extends to everything that surrounds us. If so far we’ve been appreciating the  perfection of the shirt of the man we were listening to, today it seems to become memorable the bad tooth of our speaker or the element that takes him out of the crowd. 

And everything seems to be taken beyond our control: we have a fascination towards the macabre subjects, a sick interest towards the decomposing and the imperfection of the human being. 

I wonder if this betrays an uncertainty of ourselves that we are trying to discover in the imposed models?

And even weirder it seems that we start to see even in commercials, that advertising material that entices us to buy “the new”, “the magic”, “the perfect”, a world that no longer represents the aspirational model, but somehow returns to the reality we are embracing. And this in a moment which, theoretically means our world is rising from the economical crises so spoken of. It looks like we gave up searching for this "beautiful". It looks like we are bored with "perfection". 

And yet our world is full of aestheticians, of people who “beautify” us and our world accepts so easily the modified models to fit the aesthetic norms. But the fascinations for ugly remains clearly bigger than our behavioural decisions. 

In a world that becomes more perfect every day, we start to love more the simplicity and the story beyond the paint. It’s so strange our world and the perfection we are beginning to stop appreciating and to search again for the “fleur du mal”.

Freedom - Edge of Democracy

I am missing the lovely careless vacation days, when the sun used to set on my happy feet, when the sun used to shine through the towel hanging in the window and when the sitting used to be protected by linens all the way to the seaside. And on top of that people used to sing. We had no idea what democracy looked like, we simply enjoyed the freedom of family. 
Nowadays we run away from family commitment and embrace the freedom of movement. We are free to cross borders, yet the border of our mind and soul is stronger than it used to be... 
I wonder if we realise that we're on the edge of Democracy and feeling the fresh breeze of democratic air. 
We are free to buy all the "beauty" of the west and we are free to judge what borders to cross or not. 
Enjoy the freedom and smell of it! 

Stand Out or Stand In

Our world is on constant movement. 

We live with the constant fear that every second spent is waisted. It has become so obsessive that the 80's expression of "sleeping together" no longer has the secondary meaning, but rather the literal meaning. 

And the fast pace we move in makes us forget to use words with secondary meanings or play with words. I am beginning to think the days when pun, irony and sarcasm were invented were slower times, clearly more challenging for the mind. People didn't have so much education, but they were challenged to use the little vocabulary they had in different circumstances. 

In a way we seem to live our lives more on the verge of correctly expressed, rather than richly expressed. Our thoughts are not entirely expressed. 

We don't have time to think of beautiful words, we just make sure we are saying it right. 

And that is how we are becoming robots who know how to "correctly" communicate for every type of receiver. The receiver is probably also a robot transcoding our message and putting words into actions. 

And in such a world it becomes hard to tell a story to people who cannot take time to think twice. We think at first and act upon our thought. It seems like we are all on a race against time. Funny enough, at the end of the road there is no prize. So, why rush when you can enjoy time to feel good and use your brain?

I believe that if you want to stand out, take time to think twice. Learn that pun, irony and sarcasm can actually win you an auditorium, while blending in can only fit you perfectly into the "world lego". 

Inevitable...

In the silence of the night you may feel the presence of loved passed ones... and then you realise the whole you have left in your heart... And I feel the loss, the enormous fell out of possession and I think constantly if love should also mean letting go in this way, or if we are used to possess people just like things...
It's hard to deal with death especially when it strikes in such a short notice... And it makes you think there must have been something you could have done better and it makes you feel helpless in front of it... And it make you feel like God is somehow this undoubtable step we all have to take... While life is just something chemically happening... However it's even more complicated when it comes to you being the one who decides when one's suffering ends and where you play God. There is nothing even more painful than playing the Great Divine. I don't want that and personally I believe I would become a vegetarian were it to live out of my own hunt. And this is how thoughts came into action and brought the mind to the endless wheel of justice which led the heart into infinite tears... It's hard to lose one soul, it's even harder when it strikes you that your time may be one day just as limited as that. And it's a wake up call to do what you like and what you feel it's right for you.
Keep your head up and enjoy the sun, the rest will happen anyway... Inevitable...

Where thoughts collide

The two most important persons in my life are trying to build me different images for a dramatic situation. One of them is pretty practical and choosing to end a life than see it go through all the pain and suffering. The other one chooses to hope and fight for life. The most painful of all this situation is that the sweetest being in my life is suffering a great deal and I am the one in charge with her happiness and well being. 

I love the fact that from time to time I get the chance to see my parents be terribly profound and keep their parenting style in attitude. I wish they could keep that forever. But I guess somehow the lesson about life comes also with the sad truth that all life must come to an end. However this end as certain as it is, somehow scares us. Or the suffering is what kills us. Or the simple idea that we stop being a whole being. We know from start that we will be imputed of the life we so freely received it. And we never seem to get used to this fact. 

And the sad truth is that recently we are confronted more and more with the serious Cancer affection in various shapes. I wish I could declare war on this disease. But I cannot. I feel helpless in front of this thing eating us alive. 

Now it's my cat, since winter it's Smaranda (helpsmaranda.com), a few years back it was my grandma, and so on. However you put it, it's not the state of mind. It's clearly something around us. It's clearly all the food we are so easily and cheaply fed. 

And there is little known of what we seem to turn into an angry God called Cancer. His royal highness seems to have his own shrine... 

Smile For A Smile

This is a judgemental analysis of the world today. Please take time to think about all the things that are sold to you every day with a simple smile and then take time to think if you could do the same thing in your own activity.
We buy from smiling people, from enthusiast neighbours and because of recommendations.
Smiles are very useful to our world, so a little smile somehow obliges us "to buy".
The communist society knows one individual gets into a factory and then lives working there for the rest of his life. But in the capitalist society, individuals are free and encouraged to move ahead. The entrepreneur is encouraged to change people, the business doesn't evolve around employees, the world, society, but it develops together with all these things and, of course, its entrepreneurs' ageing. So, please move ahead when you feel you are getting at the end of this step's development. Instead of having the boring look that doesn't help you, please do something you love with a smile on your face.
That should help you feel better and that will empathically transfer to your audience. And the world is much more beautiful where there is no tension.
Also, enthusiasm of the new that makes you feel self-confident is what helps both you and those you are addressing. What is best for you may be best for others too. You just need to show them and make them identify themselves with you.
Recommendations are trustworthy when the person making them is one similar to you. So you have to identify with them. Smile and the person next to you will smile back. And, there, you sold a smile!
The point is you have to embrace the new not just as consumer, but as personal development also. And that is how our world will keep rolling into the FUTURE.
And please put your heart in what you do and you will win more fans. Stop being afraid of anyone judging you. Everyone makes mistakes.
In a world that makes individuals feel lonely, you get the chance to win people over by listening to them or showing empathy. Understand their position, put yourself in that situation, stop judging and then talk to them. You will have them closer and this obliges them to trust you.
Talk too much and you lose interest. You have to save energy for the rest of the day or for the meaningful moments in your life. Jobs are not meant to exhaust you. Jobs are meant to give you the rewarded activity in a capitalist society. Other wise there is nothing new with the "job" word.
And a smile on your job will make people lose any power they think they might have upon you.

Faith and More

Throughout history humans have fought for food. No matter what vision of expansion a leader embraced, the main purpose for conquering new territories was food. 

Nowadays, food is much easier to obtain. We have food, if we work for it. The money we make allows us to buy food. The rest are details. No one is willing to fight for it anymore. There is no reason to. No one knows why battles were lead anymore. Nobody cares about history. And the apocalypse is always just a biblical word. We are fed on daily basis with strange information of panic, which leads us into more and more consumption. 

I guess we lose the main perspective from time to time and we become blinded by the ever new releases of great variety, when as "animals" our main concern and interest are the basic needs. The rest is advertising in our vains. 

Coming back to our modern life, where we go to the shop to buy something to eat and find a great variety to pick from, I have to say the struggle has changed. We now fight with the decisions we make. Our brains cooperate with the advertising messages harder and harder. We no longer feel the need to fight, we need to get as if it would end tomorrow. And there are boxes bigger and bigger getting on the market. 

Think twice before thinking we have a hard life. We have a very easy life. Easier than your pet's maybe. And yet, your pet is treated with good intention. But what if you meant wrong? Too many 'pets' and survival of the fittest.

Still, what if one day our resources would be less than the demand we have?

Somehow, we have that today in our world. We have a few corners of the world where people are not properly fed. They fight for their everyday survival. They don't fight for territory, because there is none left. Those who want to thrive leave the desert. And the outside world shall be conquered for food. They have to make it in big cities in order to reach that food everyone is talking about. 

And  somehow we have it in us to love the death stage. 

Think only of the cruel movies with box office success. 

And then count your blessings for still being alive in a time where fight is mainly with our minds on the world stage. 

Keep your sanity with every word you read and don't get lost in survival elements!