The Tiny Line

And so here we are again, what the future will be it is yet untold...

A year ago I had to make a choice for my work and life, it was not easy but I think I made the right choice at that time.

Nowadays, it is a time to think, redraw and sketch what the next step in my life will be... hopefully for better... a time for meditation, to clear thoughts and let inner feelings grow... so that the right choice can be made... what the future will be has yet to be shown, day after day the fortune future magic ball draws a tiny line that will be part of the final picture resolution...

Angel Of Sorrow

I am not dead ...

... Just not yet alive.

The Trophy

SPAIN

CHAMPION OF THE EUROPEAN FOOTBALL CUP 2008

29 June 2008

CONGRATULATIONS!!

A date not to forget... it's been 44 years since we won the last one!

Lost Under the Sun

A few weeks ago I went for a small trip to Morocco, and I was happily surprised to see that country. It is just less than two hours flight from Madrid and it is yet so different from what we can see in Spain that you can hardly imagine we are so close in distance.

Being influenced by the morish culture in the past, the south of Spain, Andalucia, is a middle walk in between the modernity of Spain and the ancient feeling of the morish culture. Flying to Morocco you will feel like a step back in the history, to see also a culture that has nowadays not been totally changed even being incluenced by french, and that it still keeps its unique atmosphere and way of life and traditions.

Marrakech holds a very large variety of small shops where you can daily go around to buy species, leather, bags, pottery, clothes... all of the market is going through the city itself and its small streets. It is therefore a place with a lot of activity and where you can easily get lost looking around. In fact every street in Marrakech has the same feeling. The streets are rarely named, in the old district the streets are narrow and confusing, and even a map does not really help much on the right orientation.

Seems like the modernity given by maps has no effect in the old cities and there is only one way for a tourist to be orientated... just ask and pray for that you will not be cheated :). The confusing streets, the similarity of its walls and its people, anything looks different no matter how many times you pass through around the same streets. Upside down, going and coming back, everything, every single street has a different feel even you unconsciously know that for sure you have passed there earlier in a previous walk. Just we can't recall where we have been!

Its colorful shops, its people moving around fastly, along with the bright of the sun will definetely make you feel like in an ancient town where in fact, time passes so quickly.

It is good to be on a place where everything runs differently from what we are used to see. Shopping in Morocco goes all through a process of bargaining, where the sellers will try to convince you that their product is the best and you will not find anything similar anywhere. They are quite friendly and much better than what I remember in Egypt, where the staff in the shop will hardly let you get out of there unless you buy something.

Morocco in this sense is very open and nobody will push you to buy, moreover they are very friendly all the time. I liked that relaxing atmosphere and I could enjoy a lot the walks around the old cities discovering myself in a new environment.

Not only walking around was interesting for the sightseeing, but also people there was quite friendly. Children in rural areas may be at the same time curious and a bit despective towards foreigners, while in the big towns they become very friendly and helpful, especially when you want to be guided around the town with no need to pay anyone for that :).

Seems like there is still a big gap between rural areas and more modernized towns where everything runs smoothly and fast. The ancient cities seem to breathe still the atmosphere of traditions on foods, family roles and clothing while the serviced and business oriented cities run daily in a crowd and speedy life, for sure more opened to changes and new lifestyles.

It is still interesting to see how business and cities around the world develop depending on its location and culture. The way they deal with customers, the variety of services offered will differ depending on which country you are and its needs. In these days of globalization, to keep each country's individual fingerprints is really a good way and need to keep a distinction of identities and cultures. So does Morocco in a whole.

At a certain point of the trip I went to the desert for a night stay. It took around eight hours drive to reach there in a van with a small group of tourists. The marks of the road nearby the desert seem to disappear like traces of the unchanged history that vanish uncertainly under the hot sun.

Suddenly you get off the van and the first feeling that comes into your mind is that you are lost. Lost under the sun. When you look around all you can see is the long time effect the wind has stubbed for ages in the sand. The particles have become so small due to the erosive action of the wind that you can hardly feel them, even knowing they are everywhere around.

The sand is pure, beautifully placed in an endless scenario of dunes that seem to be taken from another world. When you look at the horizon, seeing such a wonderful place, you start changing your mind and feeling that the desert is not truly as lacking of life and beauty as you have always been thinking.

Indeed, the desert in Morocco is one of the greatest experiences I have ever had. Firstly because I always thought of a desert as a very hot and dry place, filled with endless similar dunes and views, with nothing else to see than sand and sun. When I think if it, I realize it is true in a certain way. However to experience myself, for the first time, how the desert is in proper conditions made my original thought vanish quickly and it even moved my mind to like it.

The Moroccan desert is full of beauty in every step the camel did to reach from a lost stone castle where the van dropped us to the tents during more than one hour. Every single step forward the camel did, pushed me more into the nice sceneries, the perfection of the waves marked since ages ago and yet redrawn currently every day by the wind on these dunes.

To see one dune after another, to look at the horizon without knowing how far it can be from any sort of human life, made this walk on camels unique. Not only for the good weather and temperature, but also for the unique views it has to show. It is certainly amazing, at least for me, that at the end of the walk you will be resting in a tent, in the middle of nowhere, staring at the blue sky and full moon, with a small fire, some wind and the only company of mostly unknown people that the only common thing they have with you is the time and the place, all this surrounded by big mountains of sand, dunes that have been there probably for ages without life along it. And it is yet surprising that camels have been living around in such extreme conditions at the service of men.

Lost under the sun with no definite place to go, being driven by a camel, was once more when I realized that not all in our lifes is always planned and drawn out, but it depends on us how we want to drive it and what we want to achieve. I never thought of myself being in the middle of the desert even for a minute, and, in spite of this, I would now still have a whole life to change and live forever in the desert if I ever determined to do my life there, as I could never imagine before this experience.

Of course I will not :), but what I mean is that there are still so many things to try in this world and so many experiences to live that it would be easy to, at least, be aware of what sort of lifes and alternatives we can have during our living.

We do not have always to be stucked in a place, predetermined to do a certain life.

Maybe yes several years ago, when traveling was hard and took long hours, but we are all in all lucky to live in developed countries that allow us to travel, to experience, and even to choose what life we want to lead as we are the ones who run our wishes and determine how far and where we want to be. This is a very precious value that not everyone has and it is precisely the reason why we should take good care of it.

The world is big enough to experience a lot, and we do not always need to change our lifes, but at least we can enrich our thoughts and appreciate what we have, at the same time we become wiser to choose and to be more happy with the choices we make as in every choice there will be always a whole learning on who we are.

It was lost under the sun without a certain path to follow when I became aware that being lost can be also a very enriching experience in our personal lifes.

Therefore to doubt, to hesitate, not to know what the future will bring can turn out in multiple ways and choices for our lifes. Being optimistic about it, this experience can lead us to our own self development and enrich who we are and our views of this world.

Even lost under the sun, you will be always the only master of your dreams, wherever they go, and it is in this effort, even the sun may hit your head and the sand may come into your eyes, you will realize that everything is part of a whole, that can be as beautiful as the perfect shaped dunes that do, at the end, give a lot of self happiness that may be otherwise never had been experienced.

Therefore, never be afraid of trying uncertain paths, as they may follow you to discover new dreams and achievements that will ever remain as part of your life, which will always make you unique and define who you are, who you were, and who you want to be.

There are certain choices in our lifes that we can do surrounded by those who will advice us for good, at the same time we have to deal with choices by our own that only ourselves can understand.

Surprisingly enough, I recall now how peaceful I felt when I was diving in Malaysia, under the beautiful sea in Tioman. I could feel that I was alive and that everything I knew, everything that surrounded me in my life had been gone as I was diving by myself, without any traffic jams, people, buildings around.

You can feel that at a certain point, the desert walk gives you a similar impression as in the beautiful Malaysian sea, as you get rid of worries, crowds and it is only you who interacts with the quiet nature in its original concept. It is then when you can feel that nothing is ever lasting and everything materialistic you have is not relevant anymore, but who you are and how happy or satisfied you can feel as a person and with the life you lead, surrounded by people around you.

This abstraction is necessary sometimes not to forget what our ideals are and that no matter how busy life awaits for us after these experiences, we will be always on time to discover and redirect our lifes in the way we want them to be.

Therefore it is not always late to be lost, wherever we are, as long as we have a wish to try to lead a better life or experience a temporary change. With no regrets on fails or with a hot sun striking your head, there will be always a much compensating reward at the end, shaped like beautiful dunes, personal motivations, achievements tried, and satisfactions for attempts themselves.

The Labyrinth of Myths

Have you ever built up a small scenery inside a carton box so that when you look from outside, you can display whatever you wanted to recreate from a different perspective?

I sometimes did so in the school in my young days, cutting small pieces of paper, shaping them as chairs, desks, houses, people, with some coloured papers and finally after placing it all inside the small box, I did add some light.

And then, after the scene has been set up -like a small movie scene-, from a small hole in the box, I used to look inside and when you do, it does look like a small mini world has been created.

You can see your scene from the first until the bottom line of the box, and see how line after line your composition recreates a living story or event. Some of them are very nicely done with interior lights and it gives a very unique eye impression and delight.

Now take a piece of apple and put it in the center of a paper-boxed made labyrinth, just as one scenery described before, but much simpler.

Imagine at first that the labytinth has only one single entrance. If you then add a small group of ants on the same entrance, you will soon find out that a few of them start exploring around and the rest will follow them.

The result, even in the worse case, will be that they will all find the piece of apple, more or less in a similar time, because ants leave some smell whenever they pass through, so that others can follow them. You can observe this not only in this experiment, but commonly anywhere ants are, they make a line and follow all the group.

Give it a second try, add different entrances to the labyrinth, and one ant in each entrance. If every of them starts exploring around, some of them will pass several times for the same place, some lucky ants will find the piece of apple quickly while the rest of the group will be wondering around until they find the right way.

In this second try there will be local communication, but since every information transmitted to others is just partial, to find the piece of apple becomes more complicated, since any ant knows where the other has been.

Give it a third try, add not only one piece of apple, but several fruit pieces, several entrances and several ants on each entrance. Welcome to the chaos!

Some ants will get the piece of fruit, some others will not even know there is fruit in the labyrinth, and some will be lucky enough as to find not only one, but several pieces.

This experiment may, in a way, reflect how humans are. Replace ants for humans, fruits for wishes and the paper labyrinth for a world environment.

You will find out that we are all born in different locations, influenced by different cultures and people, and therefore our wishlist may be also different. Looking for an apple may turn into a quest, moving everywhere anytime. And so in our life, we walk around, see new things, change our wishes and priorities as we explore and live inside this huge labyrinth.

When I was seven or eight years old, I remember there was a contest in a computer magazine. I already forgot what could I win by filling in and sending certain survey to an office post box somewhere in Spain. But I remember clearly it was a contest for adults, even it didn't mention that children couldn't apply for it. So I did.

So I started filling in my personal data, name, address, and suddenly I had to stop in one field in the middle of the page, which was "current employment". Of course I was not working at that time, so I left the field blank for a while and I completed the survey. Then before I decided to cut the paper and send it by mail, I asked my mother what should I fill in the survery for "employment".

Her reply was like, "well, you dont have a job now, so you can feel free to write down there what you want to be in the future". I kept looking at her and went back to my desk to complete such a difficult task: think what I wanted to be in the future.

Such a nice reply from a mother to her son, which was followed by mine, after I have it some thoughts... what I wrote was, literally:

"Current Employment: 'I want to be a normal man.'"

Obviously, I had no idea what I wanted to be yet, I never saw myself at that time as with some ability to work and be paid for my work. Paid? What do I use the money for? I don't need a house nor a car, I am just a kid!

I can't help laughing when I imagine how the people in that company opened my envelope and found that an eight years old kid who wanted to be a normal man sent that survey to them in order to win something!!

Anyway, this answer has, indeed, some interesting points which I can recall now after so many years.

Firstly, normal man at that time to me meant have a regular life. Have a job -whatever-, have a house, a family. Just be like all the adult people around me were.
Which means, I was an ant already following what other ants were doing, or at least, I was conscious of what "others" were doing, from a very far distance.

Secondly, and I think this is quite common, most teenagers dream of a perfect life. A perfect life for me was to graduate early, get stability on work when I was 25, save money till 28 or 29, and get married around 30's. Build up a family before 35's, and live happily and peacefully for the rest of my life.

This was my master plan at that time, the apple I wanted to look for when I realized I was inside the labyrinth.

However as walking around, going through various steps, exchanging information with other ants that I found on my way, I realized that these dreams are not accomplished at the time I wanted to, and so the piece of apple I originally wanted is now spreaded in small pieces across the labyrinth that have to be found as time goes by.

How many of us have ever dreamt to have a peaceful life, or at least ordered life, and realize later on that only part of our dreams have become true? I suppose more than 90% of worldwide population? :-P . It is not that we don't fight for it, but that the challenge keeps going on depending on our environment and opportunities.

Dreams may change, knowledge, actions and chances may be different depending on where are we at the current time and what we have learnt so far from our experience and so we keep walking in the labytinth inside the same carton box, sometimes we pass through the same corner with different goals.

Myths may not always happen at a time we originally planned for, they may fade away or come back with a stronger wish for us to succeed. Time, place and environment will always affect our choices and way of life.

But yet we always look for a perfect life in the best way we can. The completion of happiness in life is not an easy task and there will be often pieces to be found in our quest. Which is at the same time not bad, as it pushes us to keep trying for what we long for.

A spanish proverb states: "Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar".

Its english translation would be like "There is no path to follow, we do the path as we walk".

This proverb has a lot to say and discuss, I do not know whether its true or not, but I think life is a combination of both, a labyrinth in which we are trapped looking for our dreams to come true as we do effort for them, and also, at the same time, an undiscovered path that will describe our life in a unique way.

That's the magic of myths to be followed, the quest of trying to succeed, and the nice feeling of spontaneusly, which can turn over our thoughts anytime.

Human instinct is unpredictible, and therefore, as long as there are myths in the labyrinth to follow, there we are, trapped and looking for our own quests to be accomplished.

Just like ants do.

The Land of Tears

Lately I have been supporting two good friends to overcome situations. I am not going to talk what happened to them nor who they are, however the common background they both have is that before those incidents, we didn’t have such a “heart-to-heart” conversation. Of course those situations are not easy to deal with, but I was happy that these friends talked to me about it and glad that they had confidence on me for telling.

What makes me think a bit deeper on this fact is how the confidence is built between humans and what makes us feel that we can be confident on someone, at the same time other people doesn’t feel similar against the same person.

Let’s say a person A is said to be good at keeping a secret that a friend B told. If this person A could keep it, means that he/she can keep all secrets? If a person A has this capacity, it is supposed it would be the same for whatever secret or personal thing that a friend confessed.

But obviously, experience and life tells us that the person A might not keep a secret that a person C told him/her previously. Why so?

What is the reason why the same person A would keep B’s confident but not C?
What makes people think differently over similar situations under similar conditions?

What makes people be confident on A, and some other people wouldn’t?
Why do we trust someone as to tell something personal and we do not trust others?

What is the level of understanding between two friends, two good friends, two old friends, two lovers, a couple or a married couple? Is it a matter of confidence, of feelings, of attraction? All of them or any?

So many questions came across this topic, which is in the end, how much friends are involved in someone’s personal situation and what friends can do for it in order to overcome bad moments.

All of us we do have secrets, and sometimes we feel we are alone in our sorrows, when the truth is that when we do find the right person to talk to, we feel that we are not alone in this huge world and there is someone who shares, respects and supports the things we are facing and trying to overcome.

Every conscious living of this world has two shapes, the one we do show everyday to those surrounding us, and a private part, in which we have to deal ourselves with our own thoughts, worries, actions and moral.

Most of us we do keep it for ourselves until a time comes that we have to spread it out, take it out of our thoughts and share it with some people so that we can release our mind.
And the more we try to communicate and express what we really feel, the better we will feel and the more confidence can be built between friends.

I remember many years ago a friend of mine told me that in order to keep “harmony” between her group of friends, she tended not to express what she felt in front of her friends. Then I did ask her that how could she know who was her friend or not if she never dared to express what she liked or what she didn’t?

It was then when she realized that we should find a way to express what we feel or what we like or dislike to others in order to know who of our friends could be more in “line” with our thoughts or way to live.

I do not say that all friends have to share same opinions or living style, I myself have a variety of friends from many parts of the world that are completely different. Even my friends in Spain are such an interesting type; most wouldn’t get along together unless I was there in-between them! That is funny :)

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that every of us has a private life or happenings that we usually don’t express, which is respectable. At the same time when we are in trouble we often feel this need of expressing that situation to someone we trust.

And in this exercise of sincerity we can find not only a way to release ourselves but also a unique chance to open ourselves to others and to create new links, personal links with the receiver that will certainly last for long and help to develop a higher quality friendship.

Everyone has secrets and sometimes we need to keep them for ourselves, in a secret place where we would be the only ones affected for them. Tears, sorrows, loneliness, all bad feelings we may have, we do not want others to know. However when we open ourselves it is when we gain most, and there is always something to win when we can share our sorrows and tears with others. I was advised by one old teacher of mine to do the same, “open yourself to others, you will always win”. I think my teacher was right...

...We find then that things happen more often than we think, that we are not the first ones to be in sorrow under those situations, that we are not alone, that there is always someone in who we can trust and this is certainly one of the most valuable parts of living.

Even the world population is over six thousand millions of people, we sometimes need just one of them to listen to feel better.

It is such a secret place, the land of tears. A place where nobody wants to be seen, a place where loneliness plays the main role, a place where no one lives except our own consciousness.

It is a place where we can be alone not being seen, a place where nobody can hear no matter how loud we would cry, a place where tears, dreams and reality mix up in the middle land of nowhere.

And yet it is probably the place where we do learn most of our own feelings, motivations and where a small ray of light shaped with a friend’s help can be the beginning of a renewed life.

Only when we understand and overcome those feelings we will be able to appreciate more what we have, and what we lost. A place where loosing something means a quest for a new treasure research, where the lost confidence can bring a chance to transform into better communication and understanding, a place where the salty tears of sorrow can start transforming into sweet tears of happiness.

The land of tears shouldn’t be a dark place where we just keep alone.

It is, in fact, a place in where we can renew ourselves and try to be more mature as we do try to change ourselves consciously to gain a better quality of life.

Such a secret place where we are consciously alone, and yet, a chance to create a wonderful new life lies.

Through a mirror

Mirrors are part of our daily life, we do use them almost everyday when we wash our face, when we dry our hair, when we just want to check how clothes fit us or whenever we drive.

Since ever I have had curiosity on how the mirrors were made, I am kind of fascinated on how do they reflect the image and how precise this image is. We do not need modern technology to be able to see ourselves or even far distant objects, and they were created many years ago without any need of semiconductors or high tech.

However they still attract me on how they can reflect our image and it is sometimes interesting to appreciate how we are similar or being changed physically.

I think it’s interesting, because in our daily life what we do most is look through our eyes to those people surrounding us, but, on the other hand, how often do we really have a chance to see ourselves other than when we wash our face or put on a tie to go to work? When was the last time you remember to have seen yourself eating, laughing or sitting in the train?

In any of the daily above situations, like when we wake up, we wouldn’t spend more than one minute. Compared to the daily time we see others with the same eyes, that’s almost nothing!

Not only to see our current aspect, mirrors can sometimes be a useful therapy. Have you ever tried to face yourself in front of the mirror and start asking yourself questions, or simply talk to yourself?

I remember I had done so before a couple of times. For example, when I was very tired or sleepy after a long night out of home and finally came back, I sometimes saw in the mirror an expression of myself being so tired that I never imagined I could have! Then I started asking to “the mirror” what the hell was I doing being home so late when I seldom go out till that late at night.

On that day, even though I assume feeling tired as something normal in a regular daily life, it was one of the few times I ever stopped for a while to see how I looked when I am very tired. Something that for sure other people around me could see, but I could not realize until I went back home!

Another time I had a food poisoning which was very severe for my health. I thought I would pass away on that night because I was feeling really sick – Will explain that story in detail in some future post cause I did learn from it-. I had to go so many times to the bathroom and once I could stand up and see myself, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

That person on the mirror looked alike me, but I could seldom imagine myself in such a situation because the image I saw was quite different from what I am used to see in my “normal” day. There was a kind of big gap between who I thought I look alike and the person who was actually reflected on the mirror.

Questions on what I saw followed my mind for some seconds… what was I doing there so far away from home, looking at one mirror which could be there for years and where certainly many other people had passed through before me. They say the walls of the houses remind all sounds and conversations happened among the families who lived in between their walls, sometimes they say that walls could speak out a lot of histories happened… but so do mirrors as well.

I started seeing myself alone, sick on that day, weak and tired as I never experienced before. This was the image I saw on the mirror and next following questions were trying to match this new “image” of me with the one I “regularly” have.

I was so sick and weak that simply I could not recognize myself in the mirror. My mind was there, trying hard to overcome the sickness, while my body had got lot of pain inside.

Do you think the person you are and how you look “fit” properly? Have you ever practiced a speech in front of the mirror, for coworkers, friends, relatives,…? Ever told loud how stupid you are in front of a mirror for being mad of something and later on thought on how stupid does it sound to tell so to a mirror?

It does sometimes feel so, but at the same time we can learn a little bit on how other people will see us. It is sometimes good to ask ourselves who we are, what we want and how we are seen. Even though looks are not important, to see how other people perceive we are does matter. And sometimes the only thing we can do for it is not only asking or seeing other people’s attitude, but to see our own attitude, how we laugh, how we talk normally, how we gesticulate in certain situations.

This brings a self knowledge which is good to know from time to time – at least not to forget.

We are a clear reflection of ourselves and people who surrounds us, our environment, history, experience. Ask yourself not only how you look, but also what you want to do, who you want to be, what is your dream, why did you succeed or fail, what is your next step, what makes you pain or simply how was your day. For a few seconds everyday.

Mirrors were also used in tales to predict the future. I do not know how this popular idea came across writers’ minds, but, thinking about it carefully, if you do look at the mirror often, understand who you are and what you want, the mirror will certainly reflect your future as soon as you reach it - day after day.

Tries, mistakes, regrets, tears, happiness, achievements, all these can be reflected one day and another in a mirror.

Sometimes we just need to look at ourselves from time to time to see how these experiences build us. It helps to see, it helps to improve, it helps to learn.

People sometimes wish would have a magic mirror and see how life will be in one year time. In a long term it would be useful to see, but most of the times, in a short term, I don’t think we do need such magic mirrors. Who will we be in a few years time is already here, daily.

We simply need to make our way in the direction we wish to. And whenever we may fail, ask ourselves how to change it so that our life will be a reflection of our attitude of life.

Get a wish, stick it to the mirror, and remind to do effort every day for it so that your actions will be driven to achieve it, step by step. The mirror will tell in the future when you finally succeed on it!

My wish is to go back to asia and make a living there, or, at least, never ever loose the touch with asian countries, their culture, people and friends. Will it happen in the future? I ask the mirror everyday to tell me about it, and the answer I daily have is the same: “I am doing all efforts for it, therefore I will certainly achieve it.”.

Some day soon I will look at myself in the mirror, and it will be a mirror placed in asia, for sure!