Seize the day

I can't think of a better way to start this but with a reference to Goethe's masterpiece "Faust". I have been planning to write an article about my trip to Africa next year as part of a charity trekking and kept thinking of a way to express my feelings the right way. While trying hard to explain why is this so important to me, I remembered Goethe's "Faust".

Faust, a man of great wisdom and virtue, made a pact with the Devil, who promised him unlimited access to all the pleasures and all the knowledge in the world. But the Devil, as a good advocate himself, has written a clause, which stated that if at any point Faust would be happy and would like to seize the moment, he would die the next instant. As much as he enjoyed worldly pleasures and had access to everything he could possibly want, Faust didn't feel the need to want to seize the moment, until he became involved in helping others. The satisfaction he received from helping, made him, without even realizing, intensely happy.

That's because Faust was probably experiencing what anthopologists and psychologists call the "warm glow" of giving.

I wanted to lay my motives bare in front of everyone and say that yes, perhaps I too, long for the "warm glow" of giving. And that perhaps it comes a time in life when nothing seems valuable anymore, when you stopp running for succes, money, career and everything that we were trained to pursue and wonder whether there isn't something else out that will make life worthwhile.

"Ah! Now I’ve done Philosophy,

I’ve finished Law and Medicine,

And sadly even Theology:

Taken fierce pains, from end to end.

Now here I am, a fool for sure!

No wiser than I was before:

Master, Doctor’s what they call me,

And I’ve been ten years, already,

Crosswise, arcing, to and fro,

Leading my students by the nose,

And see that we can know - nothing!" (Faust, Act 1)



What do we know in fact? That somewhere in the world people live different lives as if Earth was divided in different little planets. That we know close to nothing about the other little planets, except that they need our help. We also know that abundance doesn't bring happiness and it doesn't bring the satisfaction a person longs for. But what we do know is that we can take this abundance and put it to good use - maybe plant a few seeds of hope on a poor little foreign planet. While sacrificing for it. The "warm glow" will come together with the endorfines released from climbing the high Simien mountains and maybe then, on a high peak, surrounded by greatness and silence, with the wind telling magical tales of ancient civilisations and universal truths, perhaps then, the Faust in me will want to absolutely seize the moment.


If you would like to sponsor me in my trekking, please donate on my Just Giving page.
If you would like any information about the trekking, the charity or the cause, just drop me a line.

My way

In a world that keeps pushing dreams our way, it seems that living for what one really wants has become one of the biggest challenges one could encounter.
In a world that becomes more and more diverse and complex, one finds himself wondering how come that all that he has achieved up to date doesn't really hold any real value.
In a world that speeds frantically and irrationally, one has forgotten how to live.

If it was only my case, I would stand accused and say nothing, as I have always been one of those people that has pointed things out and has always complained about the wrong things in life. If I were the only one that didn't find my place and cried in the middle of the night because waking up and going to work just doesn't have any logic, I would stand accused. If I were the only one who finds herself suddenly woken up from the common dream and wondering what was life suppose to be all about, I would say no word.

But I am not the only one and the same way I stare at the wall and ask myself over and over again what is it that I am suppose to be doing with my life in order to feel the happines and satisfaction with my existence, the same way, I am sure, there are hundreds, thousands and possibly even millions of people asking themselves the same question.

In a world that is so big and yet so small, young Londoners find themselves wondering what will it take to make the life worth living... Surely it can't be the season sales, or the all inclusive holidays, or the drinking with mates, or the comfort eating, or the playing sports, or the pulling in bars, or... Surely there must be something else. That something that we were born to do and is probably just under our noses without our noticing...

One of my very good friends pointed it out for me the other day that I should stop taking whatever comes my way and go for what I really want. I stopped for a second to think about it and I realized that I have always(ALWAYS!!!) just taken opportunities that came my way. I have never gone for a job because I wanted that job badly and I would have polished someone's shoes for a year just to get it. I have just accepted offers that happened to seem reasonable at the time, never taking into account what would that offer mean to me in the long run. I just did it and moved on, hoping that the future will write itself somehow. As if I was afraid to make choices for myself, I have allowed fate to decide for me. I suppose this type of attitude is valid for everything else in my life: I have never chosen. I have simply accepted. Hence my lifelong dissatisfaction with my life.
I think the only choices I have made are my friends and my books. These are the two aspects in my life I feel strongly about and I feel entitled to accept or reject. Anything else, until now, didn't mean much...

I have worked hard with myself to not only give myself unconditional love, but change the way I look at life in order to reflect this self love. I believe that by making my own choices, I show myself love and respect and portray that person that I have always wanted to be.

I still don't know what choices will I have to make and what compromises in order to achieve my goals, but at least now I am sure that if I want to live a meaningful life, I will have to do things my way!

Trusting myself

I am sure my friends want the best for me. I am also sure that sometimes they don't know what to tell me anymore after hearing my complaints over and over again and end up telling me off. Or telling me something that I don't want to hear simply because it makes sense to them.
I suppose I do the same for my friends. At first I am sympathetic and encouraging and after a period of time when things fail to improve, I suggest to them to seek specialized help. I suppose we can't blame each other because no friend in the world holds anybody else's answers. The only answers are within us and all we have to do is stop and feel.
Feelings are the only reality and the only indicator of what a person is going through. Learning to listen to those feelings is probably a person's best chance for survival. Listen to yourself and nurture your needs.
A lot of the things that I have been through recently I had to deal with myself. Don't get me wrong, I did pour my heart out in front of my closest friends, but in the end I had to deal with all my issues myself. And it works. Learning how to listen to myself is probably the best thing I have ever done. After a while, you become a doctor in your own feelings and recognize signals almost without fail. I have learned that no matter how well intentioned is a friend that tells me "I really liked that guy you were seeing two months ago, what was wrong with him? I think you might be becoming too demanding", or "I think you should get back with your ex", or "Just find yourself a nice guy", none really knows better what's best for me than myself.
I can only be with the person that brings the best in me and awakens the playful side of myself and allows me to live life with open arms. Anyone else, will just force me to live with a side of myself that is miserable and aggressive, reproachful and nasty, cold and bitter. And this is why, no matter how great someone was, sometimes their presence and solicitude provokes the worst in me. The more they would try to please me, the more I would reject them. While others, perhaps less than an obvious choice, would make me feel happy and light, funny and attractive.

Therefore, my friends, I think I have answered my own question: I have only myself to trust to make the right choices in life. But thanks anyway...

Hypochondria - the new "mal du siecle"?...

"Hypochondria is a mental preoccupation with real or suppositional physical or mental disorders, a discrepancy between the degree of preoccupation and the grounds for it so that the former is far in excess of what is justified, and an effective condition best characterized as interest with conviction and consequent concern, and with indifference to the opinion of the environment, including unresponsiveness to persuasion." (Retterstol, 2007)

Hypochondria is not new, it hasn't been invented yesterday, but goes back as Hypocrates. However, after going through a terrible episode myself, I have reasons to believe that it might just be the "plague" of the 21st century.

After being asked and get my lumps checked, I started convincing myself that, although most lumps are harmless, I was the one who had the really dangerous type. I went as far as having panic attacks, nightmares and even thinking that if this wasn't the case, then I probably had some other horrible and unimaginable disease. I went so far as to get myself checked for many other diseases (which in itself it's a good thing, especially as I came out clear) and the more I got reassurance on some, I wanted to check other possibilities. But somehow this had to stop, as feeling the way I was feeling contributed to a rapidly declining state of mind, which was affecting my day to day life. And if my biggest fear was to lose my life, well, I wasn't quite living it, was I?...

After doing a quick search on the disease and finding out how closely it related to depression and schizophrenia, I still didn't understand the extent to which this apparently harmless and mockable condition could affect someone's life until I found out that so many of my friends had been through similar episodes. Close friends came up to me and confessed similar phobias, whether it was fear of heart attack, cancer or bubonic plague.

I don't base my statement on any evidence(I am sure I can find one, if I must) so you'll have to trust me on this one, but it seems that the increased awareness of certain types of diseases makes them the top of the hypochondriac's shopping list. I also tend to believe that the mounting level of information and statistics regarding deaths and cases of terminally illnesses, influences people nowadays to believe that one day it is going to happen to them...

Why do we get like that? I mean, I am sure nobody wants to go through hell and back thinking about illness and death, so there must be something more subtle at work. Based on my own experience, I believe that a certain level of stress and feeling of unachievement can easily trigger it. When happy, we don't really listen to our bodies, but when we feel low, everything surfaces. Our body reacts to the instructions of our mind.

Someone mentioned to me the other day that it might be related to the Quarter Life Crisis (I couldn't have said it better myself: Read about Quarter Life Crisis) which more and more people go through nowadays. Other will argue that we live in blessed times when opportunities are higher than ever and it's not fair for the people of the 21st Century to go through Quarter Life Crisises when they have so much more than their predecessors, including a higher life expectancy! I would probably answer to those people that then again we are brought into this world with higher expectations and not meeting them (which is probably the case of most people) makes us feel like we are failures and gets us steps closer to depression and related states of mind. Perhaps that's why we are so afraid of disease and death. Because we haven't fulfilled our mission, haven't reached our goals and we are terrified that we will leave this world without having lived up to the standards.

Yes, hypochondria is an expression of all that and not something we should joke about. I noticed that being part of a small community of hypochondriacs did help and I urge anyone who has ever felt that kind of desperation to give a helping had to someone in distress. An article published in the Guardian in 2007 ("How do you cure Hypochondria?") talks about methods of dealing with the irrational fear of illness and thankfully, there is hope. Apparently, receiving reassurance from your doctor doesn't remove the fear. The sufferer is trapped in his/her own mind and cannot escape without help. I hope this can help...

I still haven't received my diagnosys, but I am hoping that hypochondria is not one of them...