Dear Anti Diary,

I think you have figured out by now that I am not exactly your girlie girl girl.

I am not. Not that I have anything against girlie girls; On the contrary I confess sometimes I think life would be easier if I could be one,

Anyways, this is one thing that I wonder about girlie girls: The female purse/bag.

I see them everywhere. All females carry some sort of bag. Most of them are huge and it makes me wonder what do they have inside.

Why is this that women carry stuff around? Do they really use that much stuff? Can they find everything in their purse?

I think women are multitaskers. We have certain talent to do many things at the same time. I guess its nature way on not letting babies die because mom is preparing food or something and we have evolved that gene into amazing things. So then it kind of makes sense the whole bag thing. I think.

If you have multiple masks to wear (driver, professional, mom, girlie, powerful, cute, etc) that calls for multiple props. Just think of a play. Different stages call for different stuff.

Is that it?

I don’t really use a purse. I have purses of course. I do carry a messenger bag (beautiful vintage worn leather one) because I carry a lot of papers back and forth from the government. But I have spent more than a minute thinking if I should put more inside. You know, I have keys, wallet (well, not wallet, a plastic little case that holds all my cards), gum and chapstick. That is it.

The contents of my purse sometimes make me feel inadequate. I have been present when females ask other females if they have a pocket scissor and they take it out of their purses. Wow, its like McGiver but with style and not set to prove the world they are awesome. They just are.

For now, I still proudly wear my messenger bag. And I am still a female. Maybe I should find stuff to fill it up.

What do I think its the best example of the ultimate demise of western society?

Politics? Economics? Foreign Policies? Wars based on oil?

Well, yes. But No.

I have the ultimate example.

- PUBLIC STORAGE -

What? Yes, you read it right. Public Storage.

When I first found out about this types of enterprises I was floored. Think about it. Really, think about it.

We decided as humans that in order to be succesful we needed to accumulate stuff. We gave incredible meaning to things. We detached ourselves from other humans and invested that energy into non-living things (stuff).

That was bad already but we did it in the privacy of our own spaces. We walked around re-shifting stuff and discussing stuff and re-arranging it. We got rid of some and got some more. We gave stuff away and spended vulgar amounts of money on other newer, better stuff.

That was limited to our houses (and garages). Our houses got bigger (sometimes incredibly gibber), our garages turned out to be more for boxes of unused stuff than for cars or vehicles. We opened attics, under-stairs storage, over furniture designer boxes, under bed inventive shoe plastic containers, etc.

Wow, we found out way to store the stuff we don’t need and no longer use everywhere. But still, you had to deal with it. You had to have “conversations” about it with roommates, wives, husbands, neighbors, etc.

So, what did we do? Did we fix the root of our failing and illusory thought that stuff will make our lives better?

Oh no we didn’t.

No.

We now PAY a company to rent us some more space to store the stuff that we cant let go. We get rid of stuff in our houses and just move that problem to another location. We close the place, shake our hands and feel lighter. But we are not. Oh my god we are not. Why oh why would you store that stuff away? Are you ever going to retrieve it? Are you ever going to go back to look for that important box of Christmas ornaments? Or are you going to stop at Walmart and buy brighter, newer ones?

We are over producing stuff. We have way too much stuff in the western world. Yet we accumulate more and more. Stuff you never needed to begin with. Stuff that never made you happy. That stuff was a weight on your shoulders and you had nightmares about it. Now its far away and you’re spending money every month to lie to yourself, thinking its safe there. Safe from what? From your conscious.

That for me is the ultimate example of how we have turned the meaning of life into useless guilt and rented spaces.

Stuff will never make your life better. Stuff will eventually weight you down so much that you will  need more stuff in order to imagine a way out. Stuff is keeping you from living a free life, its keeping you from investing in human contact, in human issues.

Get rid of the stuff you don’t need, give it away so its distributed evenly for proper use and effectiveness. There are people out there who actually might need some of your stuff and who will make something out of it.

Letting go of the limitations of our man made needs might put us in the right path to a better human society, a better non stuff driven more balanced group of people.

There, that is my theory and example and I am sticking to it.

I will admit it. I find grey and darkish moods to be terribly beautiful. There is something so deeply attractive to me about a certain nostalgia of things I have never seen or heard or experienced. Its like a collective or genetic memory. I really do not know.

I do recognize that there is beauty in light and in positive messages. But a black and white printing, or a dark tunnel only lighted by a faint glow holds so much meaning to me.

I don’t think sorrow is blue, I think its grey and sometimes I think its beautiful.

In an era of full time distractions, when we are nostalgic or sad is that time when we turn to ourselves and for a moment the world seems to disappear. I think there is importance there. Think about it, for every time I have been sad I have come out knowing so much more about me. I have a feeling of having spent ‘quality time’ with me.

I’mnot sad nor am I nostalgic today. But in a weird way I wish I was, because i get to write more, I get to wonder more, I get to observe a little closer all the little details that make living so mind blowingly unique.

I fear not though, because I know eventually I will be again there, and then I will be again here. And I get to live both and write about it.

I don’t know about you, but I always assume I am not right. I know I don’t know everything so this position allows me to learn something.

This is the thing. I started my law career in criminal law, and for a period I thought that was my north. For many not important reasons (including changing countries) I ended up not following that path, but for the short period I lived in it I could not help but question the system at every step.

I have this weird theory about criminals. Bear with me. I think most criminals are a direct consequence of unbalanced societies, and because societies in themselves are different, the crime path varies.

DISCLAIMER: I am not talking about deviant, sick behavior, since I think there are people out there who are truly sociopaths or suffer from deep mental problems.

Say we have a society where 80% of the population lives below or just barely at the poverty line and you have the other 20% who are high above this line and enjoy the luxuries of the western world. This society would still be driven by western patters of success, meaning the possession of stuff and the accumulation of capital is the goal. If you take the 80% who are born with all odds against them you are bound to created a destabilizing force that could drive some of them into criminal behavior, be it in order to survive or in order to “make it” according to the idiosyncrasy they are in.

These are subcultures of failed success (that is my theory by the way). We humans thrive in becoming better human beings, the problem is that the “better” part has become (mostly in cities) the idea of having more money exponentially.

Now, take another society. Take a deeply religious society. A baby who is born into this environment is unequivocally going to develop the beliefs common to his/her group. They will grow up surrounded by common thoughts that might not seem so common to you, but it is their reality.

Now, are they determined for life by these factors?

I believe it is unfair.

I believe in second chances, because after all, I believe we do not know everything and as humans we are destined and determined to make mistakes based on temporarily beliefs (what?, yes, I believe some beliefs are temporarily).

Now think about our Prisons. Yes, think about when we lock people out because they committed a crime. Are we really doing something good by locking people out this way? What is the outcome in the end for all of us?

We are all humans. We have all made mistakes at one point, I even think we have all committed some kind of crime (probably a very light one) in our lives. Think about lies that you have told and when people find out the shame you feel and the need you crave for a second chance.

I think we have to consider that not all humans are born in the same environment with the same access to opportunities and free thinking. I think we are turning the blind eye to our nature and forgetting that these people do deserve to come out (if they ever come out) another chance. You never know, there is infinite potential in all of us and we are wasting human lives, disposing them so we can sleep safe. But we cant, no. The reasons why we have criminal behavior will be there forever if we dont take care of societies. Crime is a symptom of unbalance and it seems we are deeply unbalanced and regarding our penitentiary system we are also ignorant and blind.

I might be off on this one. But I’ve been inside prisons. I have talked to criminals, I have laughed with them. I have had lunchs with them. They are really jus another human being. I am not making any excuse for their behavior, they deserve “correction” but they also deserve a second chance at being what most of them ant to be: another good human being who belongs in a society, productively.

So, who gets to decide if somebody’s life is worth nothing?

Yes, sometimes I even wake up wondering things. Even with my eyes still closed i pose myself questions, just like that.

I wondered why we feel we are limited by training. Sounds confusing I know.

Ok, I guess I am a natural multitasker. I have been all my life. I think my father in order to “protect” me from failure told me over and over that it was ok not to have any specific talent, that the world needed people to actually perform, produce, basically do things.

Its not like I took it to heart. Who really listens to their parents anyways, right? But it made me wonder (at a very tender age) about people who actually had very defined talents. They seems suddenly to be bound by it. Prisoners of their own passion. Not capable of doing anything else but that. Hmm

Then you (or somebody else) decide to go to school and train to be “become” something (like you are not something to begin with) and probably after you ‘specialize’ in something more especific about the first thing you “became”. And then, it seems, that is it. That is your field, your like. You will be what you do. You will be determined by your daily activity from 9 to 5.

Probably you will wonder what if. Many times. What if I would have gone to Europe and backpack my way into adventures? What If I would have learned guitar and I could have been in a band? What if I would have left school to start my bakery?

Notice how they are all in the past? There is nothing you can do now about it. Absolutely nothing. Its gone, its past.

But hey. You are not what you do. You are not determined by your decade in that job. You are not (insert your name here) that is a (insert profession here).

Remember why we have jobs to begin with? No, its not money. We created jobs so society could be a better place for all of us. We needed things to be done and we divided tasks to do it to then enjoy life since everything would be taken care of. Your duty as a citizen is to perform at your job, be proud of it. But that does not mean that that is it for you.

Go start something. Take those classes. So what if you think you are too old? Only you care, I certainly don’t. Want to go backpack to Europe at 40? Take a carry-on instead of a backpack, but go.

Why I woke up wondering about this? I wanted to write for a living. Long time ago I almost made that choice. But I didn’t. Funny thing is I have never stopped writing. Be it here, be it in notebooks, in walls, in my mind, in computers, in sheets or through my phone. I might not be a professional writer with many books sold, but writing is something that I cannot stop doing, even if I try.

Am I determined by my 3 jobs? If somebody would ask me who am I, somewhere in that complex and full of silence explanation I would totally say I am sometimes determined by what I write, because most of the time I am writing to myself.

Cheers dreamers.

I wonder who came up with that name and why. Really. I should go and check in Wiki.

But before that, I would just like to say that today was probably the most beautiful day so far of this year, 2010. Wow, the colors, the light, the temperature, everything was custom made, beautiful.

I grew up in a place where there are no seasons really. Sure, the year varies slightly in temperature, but the real change is raining season and dry season. That is it.

We -it seems- count days differently because of it. A year is a really long time. Its a very big group of days clumped together. No change except in yourself. And then I realized: Wow, that is it. Maybe.

In school I remember reading an interesting book about geographically inclined theories. It was -and is- a very outdated book on how societies are similar when they have similar weather. It divided the world in subgroups depending on the fact that if they had winters or not. Simple, basically if an area had winter that means that people there had to work hard in order to survive it; therefore the culture they passed on was one of hard workers.

Then when I read about tropical parts of the world, of course I was insulted. Apparently we were blessed with a cornucopia of unlimited natural resources very easily available. Therefore, there was no effort to survive, more than the mundane human ego battles between who got to live closer to the river or closer to hunting grounds.

Now, this theory was discarded, I am thinking because it is pretty much politically incorrect. And its true, it was not proven nor it was sustented on data. However, there is something about this line of thought that struck a nerve.

Now I understand why.

See, I live now in winter town. We are under the blanket of winter 7 months a year. When I first moved here I wondered (as always) about how humans decided in the first place this was a good place to settle. Crazy. I still wonder the same, but I understand things more.

yes, everybody needs to make it in order to survive the winter, even in our “advanced’ societies. There is no living on the streets, or wondering around, you will die at minus 30 degree or get lost in the snow, period.

Does that make people here work better? Probably. But there is also a human toll. The grayness and the lack of light are hurtful to the soul. The city stays alive but we die a little inside. I know there are people who would like to tell me its not true. But 7 months is a long time and even if you find 3 months of outdoors and indoors winter-related fun (and there is plenty) you still have 5 months to go.

In the tropics people do not have to worry about this. Truth is they started to worry not too long ago, because worries down there (generalizing) are man made. I am guessing when Columbus landed in Venezuela he thought it was summer and then he stayed and realized the opportunities of a never ending perfect weather. But then, they lived there and they stopped thinking about it, because it was always there. There was no change. Now man made problems had to be developed. Living was too easy ( I am skipping of course diseases). So we complicated things, and still to this day the tropics are a pietri dish for corruption and power monopolies.

The winter lands evolved into rich industrialized countries and the tropics became 3rd (3rd? who came up with this?) world countries that serve as tourist destination for the people in the first group.

Now, when we compare both groups, it is very difficult to me to point if one is right over the other. Which system is better? and humanly why? A balance would be nice for sure. But currently I am just questioning my own standards of success. And 7 months in winter does not seem to be a winning factor in “stable” (please) societies.

I love my childhood memories of walking down a busy downtown street and climbing up a tree to pick a mango to eat on my way home. Did that make me lazy? Well, I have 3 jobs and I volunteer a lot. I write, I cook, I smile a lot. I am apparently a hybrid of this new world.

And now I am wondering what’s going to happen with this global warming? Are we all going to be put in the same category?

Wow, I wonder, a lot.

p.s: by the way. I love winter. I do, I know its funny, but I love white fields, I love the sound my feet make when I walk in the snow. I like the silence of the woods and the smell of the fire burning in chimmeneys. I do. Its just a little too long. that is all.

We humans ( totally generalizing) seem to have expectations about everything except the life of our nations and the life of the world. We make plans and stress about our decisions, the choices that’ll affect our existence, yet I feel that we forget that is engrained in our nature to have formed this societies and imaginary boundaries that we call countries. Ever thought that bigger decisions that directly affect yours are being made right now without your voice? That coffee that you’re drinking and that computer that you’re staring at are not there because of sheer magic. There were economical and strategically thought choices somebody made. Thank god you Ike those things. How about the ones you don’t like? How about the guilt you naturally feel when you see the blatant injustices happening in your country right now? You think your powerless over them? You think those things won’t affect your daily life? It does. The prices of things, the state of your public transportation and the senseless corruption happening right now are all related to the voice that you’re keeping silent. I’m not asking you to run for office or drop everything to go protest. No need. Little meaningful things. Go to the next town meeting. Read more about your community and the world; make yourself wonder about outcomes and ask questions. Support people who you believe have the power of starting bigger things. Talk about important issues with your friends, open the door to conversations that might lead to new horizons. Be involved. Be active. It’s part of your nature, we are all after all part politicians and we hold a tradable currency most important to better things: our opinion.

Oh for crying out loud. Really?

There we go with the same question: Are you liberal?, conservative?, socialist?, communist?, democratic?, orthodox?, leftist?, progressive?,anarchist?

Really?

Well, here I go, once and for all.

First, there are definitions there that I would literally have to study in order to come up with a proper answer.

Second. Why in the world will I “join” a club who thinks its only reason to be right is to oppose the “other club”

Third. Really?

Fourth. Categories are as insulting as some board of educations thinking about erasing evolution from what they teach to kids.

Let me please expand a little about these categories; We are not infallible, we are humans, our thoughts evolve therefore change. Times change. We have already prove ~beyond any reasonable doubt~ that we have pretty much failed in ANY system that we have put into place. Now, am I generalizing? YES. Have we come up with good things? Absolutely. But look around you, we fucked up. Somewhere along the line (or maybe right at the start line) we decided that power, greed and money should be at the top controlled by a few and that we -the “common” people- will be happy with the slim change of one day becoming one of those few. Fuck that.

How many times have we discovered that people who call themselves “Liberals” are really just as conservative as the pope? How many times we have seen a “socialist” turn “communist” because of greed?

Who do we think we are? DO we really think we got it all figured out that we can actually give this “definitive” labels to what we think? Wow.

I want to call myself IGNORANT. Yup, with pride. I do not know if I belong to any club for sure. I only know that I might be wrong on my theories, that I strongly believe some of them and that I am open to adopt any idea that feels great in my head and gut. It might be a conservative idea, it might be a socialist idea, it might be a communist principle. It might just be a theological doctrine (highly doubted it, but I am open to it)

I think we need balance. I think we need to understand that so far, our “definite” truths have failed us, deeply. I think we need to get back to common human principles: what is good for most, what could work better than what we have know and the ability to realize that everything is a trial where some things will work and some dont, and life as we know it its a constant evolution of the journey to look for better things.

Do not let other people define your “better things” nor let them include you in their club. I know we need to belong to something, but why is it that in order to belong to something we need to push people and ideas away?

How about we belong to now, we belong to the future, we owe it to our human history.

So here it is, my theory on drawers (aka categories). So they can go ahead and categorize this (insert whatever universal middle finger gesture here).

I just stood in front an open wagon of the metro debating if I should go inside or not.

I didn’t.

I took another line of the metro to get to this connection and inside my wagon was this guy, wearing a nice suit and dark glasses who kept murmuring how he hated everything. He’s carrying two big backpacks and for sure looks troubled.

This is not the first frustrated or crazy person I encounter in the metro, but for the first time when I was standing now to take the next wagon I wondered: what if?

I thought about reporting him. Then I shook my head thinking that he might just be having a bad day and boy am I going to make it worse.

But I felt this nod in my stomach. I couldn’t help it.

So I didn’t ride that metro. Instead I went to report him. I was able to take a picture with my phone and I showed it to police.

But before that. When the wagon doors closed before me I felt panic. What if something indeed happens to these people. Coward, I thought..

This is the age of terror. This that I just experienced has been engraved in my brain by the collective mainstream idea that terrorism is very close.

Truth is, is not. Nor it has been. Because it can happen, I acknowledge it but I refuse to live my life doing what I just did.

It’s been half an hour and nothing happen. Except that I’m feeling ridiculous and brainwashed.

The principle of law is to set the way we should behave in society. That is the general definition on why we have laws and what are they for.

This more and more is not the case. Or better yet, we have become very complex entities that require enormous amount of rules in order to do things. However, I tend to not agree.

Laws are obscure now, They are indecipherable sets of words that seems to be made and put into place to favour some over others. If we take the popular phrase that we are all equal before the law, then, I should do research to which law this phrase refers to, because certainly this does not apply for most that I know now.

Take the economical debacle that we are still living for example. That totally changed the game, and I say game because that is what we have turned our legal lives into. All contracts and agreements that were signed before the debacle became widely known were signed and agreed under a set of rules that included the current state of the world back then.

Let me explain this. If I sign a contract today for renting a space with a landlord  order to live there, I of course will do my homework and check if the building is sound, if there are noisy neighbors and if access of services are available. On the other hand, the landlord will check my credit, take my payment and state in the contract the rights and obligations. Now, what happens if the next day the building collapses? Think it is extreme as an example? Well, that is what happened with the economical structure that ruled say, mortgages.

I could tell you that it is obvious to everybody that the contract no longer stands because the main object of the agreement does not exist. Therefore things are not what they used to be when the contract was signed. Better known legally as REBUC SUC STANTIBUS (as things continue to be as they are).But apparently its not either obvious nor it is illegal for the landlord to inforce the obligations of the contract against me.

Now, bancks that held mortgages against (and please I am using AGAINST on purpose) people’s property (EVENTHOUGH banks would like to say is their property) could not longer stand on the same ground they did before the signature of the agreement, right? Well, according to what happened its not. WRONG.

Government HAD (?) to bail out banks, but there was no bailing out regular people. Banks stood in court waving contracts and forcing people to deal with foreclosure, bankcrupcy and homelessness while they covered their losses with the Nation’s reserve of money (including tax payer’s money in case you are wondering)

I am not making excuses for people who took a credit higher than they should have and I actually condemn this structure that allows people to go in debt that far. But, I have to go against malicious power structures that took advantage of the crisis and got huge amount of help from the government.

Somebody should have stood in court and proclaim this Rebuc Sic Stantibus principle. Somebody should have challenge the government on bailing out fraudulent and conspicuous practices that generated more money for people who don’t need it. but it didn’t happen. Why? Because basic trust in the law is gone. Most of the people who signed the mortgage did not even read the document and if they did they probably did not understand what it said. For those who asked questions, the answers were probably a general “don’t worry” just pay each month and you’ll be ok.

I think Law should be taught in high school and it should be mandatory in University and College. Yes, stand up. Those rules are there FOR YOU. You behave under those rules and every day you are being taken advantage even by lawyers because you don’t know.

Basic, very basic. It affects everything you do. But most important to me, that is the real tool we have for controlling the controllers.

This should not happen ever again. And the same way I think law should be common knowledge I also think it should be taken out of this bureaucracy/complicated/mumbojumbo limbo that we have let it crawl into

Ask, read, challenge. You may loose some but believe me, you will win in dignity and with your actions we will restore this system back to where it belongs: Our common well-being.

So I have realized lately that it is not a rule that everybody has common sense.

Wait, no. Let me re-phrase that. Not everybody has “the same” sense of “common”

Reason I say this is because as much as I like to think that we are all good and our intentions are not bad at the core, I think I am wrong.

Damn.

Question. Why would anybody cares if two men want to get married? Or if someone decided to have 4 adult and consenting wives?

What have we come to? I dont care what people do in private, I care about the love they give to their family and how much they contribute to their community and/or society.

So, now. If we are going to judge by results, then some “traditional families’ are at fault here. And if it was for the outcome and future of kids, I am sorry but so far the mono-nuclear traditional family has not been living up to their legal persona.

Screw that. An abandoned kid is a crime be it you are in a mom and dad family, be it that you are in a single mother family, be it that you are in a polygamous nucleus. That is what matters to me. I don’t care what  you do behind closed doors as long as you are raising good and productive human beings who feel love and respect between themselves and for others.

I grew up as a only child, and let me tell you, it sucked balls. So maybe my heart jumps a little when it sees a nbumerous family getting along and loving each other.

All families are dysfunctionals, I don’t believe I am one to point fingers.

And by the way I dont think you are either.

Isn’t that common sense to everybody?

Apparently not.

This is the thing about Democracy, if you believe in it.

First, you should know what it is, what it implies and how does it work. Why? Well„ it rules your world, period. We are constantly trying to understand how things work in our life, yet we fail at one of the most important and that is the delegation of the running of your country, decision making for all, including you.

Democracy is not a game. It is a chosen path. We might not agree, but we also do barely nothing.

This system (chosen by you by the way) values majority. Funny thing, everybody has a chance to voice their opinion through their vote (and other ways too), and just like when we were kids, the most people who agree on something will be the ones carrying the activity at hand. In this case ruling your country, how about that.

In this system, you should respect the outcome of the votes. You tried and you can keep on trying by working hard on positively changing what you think is wrong, but in democracy accepting defeat is key.

There are infinite ways to create a better system within the system. Complaining is not one however, acting on your complaint is. Being actively informed and taking part in the choices that affect your life should be priority on your list, you are the one who suffers from your own apathy.

Why I am writing on this? There has been now 2 failed coup d’etat in Latin America. We are young countries with a history of interventionism and power monopoly that dates back to the conquerors. We are trying to find our identity and the masses are talking louder and trying to make their own choices and elect their own leaders. Our vision of success and intelligence was for a long time shadowed by the vision of other countries with others histories and other cultural and economical systems, therefore they were bound to fail, as they did.

Today, thanks to technology and the flooding of independent information and human dignity restored for the ‘common’ people this majority choices are being harder to take away. There can no longer be (as it was in recent Latin American history) a coup d’etat every couple of years based more on economical power struggles between people who carried international interests before their own coutries’. They are still trying, but we are no longer the same. We believe now, we recreated democracy to our situations and boy are we liking it very much. There is a bigger army to fight now, we are a bigger voice, we know better and we feel more comfortable with our leaders looking and talking like us. We see change, whether we like it or not, change is on the streets and that only leads to more change, and adaptation and evolution.

We deserve to chose our own democracy just like other countries decide to. We should not turn the other side when the news bend the information to try to shape your opinion on the world. If Something like what happened in Ecuador yesterday happened in USA, and it was Obama taken hostage by the police, there would be an international outcry and astonishment around the world. USA would apply every law it has to assure the culprits pay the price for treason and Obama would never be the same, nor the country.

Now I ask you, mainstream news are talking about Ecuador’s situation yesterday as a labour dispute. Even after the president talked in the balcony of the “white House” telling the story and naming it as an attempt of a coup and almost assassination, we still only see 3 min clips of the “bizarre” event that happens on ‘those places”. You think we are that far away? Do you think this could not affect you?

My democracy is not better than yours. But my democracy stands strong before yours and asks for respect. We are in this together, we might not agree, but we agreed on this system (for now).

I am consistently amazed by the wonderful people out there who feel the passion and express their voices and opinions. This is the future, we are more connected than ever and I think new ways to exercise our rights are being spontaneously created everyday, we are discovering information every second and curiosity is the rule now, how cool is that?. You guys really rock, just the fact that you are reading my little rant here is awesome, now we just need to rock harder, louder and expand our horizons.

Be active, stay strong and say anything, really. I think we are all listening now.

No, I do not want to know your success story and no I do not want to read about the power of positive thinking.

Know why?

because I can help but wonder if the power and success are so strong why in the name of the happy face on your t shirt you are selling a crappy book and putting awful videos that look like they were made for BETA (yeah, that’s right BETA as in the one before the VHS)??

Why??

No, I cannot stand you and the fact that you are fooling innocent and desperate people.

Pessimists and realist unite, we must stop this crap.

Somebody jumped on the metro today. That person just wanted to end it all.

I did not see him/her jump. I just suffered the consequences of his/her actions. And I am not talking about waiting in the wagon for 20 minutes without ventilation when it is almost 40 degrees outside. No.

I am talking about what it made me feel and think. I am still suffering those consequences.

We regard time as a constant controller. We are always running out of time, because time moves forward no matter what we do. Its the ultimate equalizer, we all run (no, not on dunkin donuts) under the same count of seconds, minutes, hours, etc.

Or do we?

Because time kind of stopped when we collectively realized that somebody took their life. Conversations, looks and whispers invaded that little space with a lot of people in the metro. Some complained, but most of us just looked at each other suddenly realizing we were indeed alive.

What is it about time that we stress so much about? Is it we are behind on things to do? Because I am thinking now that I should just make another to do list where I include just being. Not thinking, not counting minutes. Just being. No list of things I should do before I die, because I do not know when I will die. I am just sure now that I am alive, I did not jump on the metro tracks. I am here, Now.

No plans for tonight, I think I might just hear my thoughts for a while, and just stored my watch, took off the clock option on my phone.

Time is mine at least for now…

Its funny how lately I have been sitting down in the audience chair of my life. I guess you’d call it a life crisis, but I am just outside of it all.

I started this blog because I wonder, a lot. and it is true, I am constantly writing this blog in my head, although seldom I sit down and make it into written words.

I get affected by situations like everybody else, but lately I am able to step back and look at it from the “outside”. Now, I am not sure if this is a good thing yet. It does not make me feel better nor it makes the situation go away. But my rational conscious mind is taking me to a whole new level of perspective.

For example.

I am looking for a job. I get myself completely focus on the task, I prepare for interviews and browse through offers and even try on clothing that will make a great impression. Then I am in the actual interview and suddenly a monologue starts in my head:

“Why were you so nervous? This is only another human being looking for help, searching for someone to be part of his/her team… Team, what a curious term, you are never really a team when you work in an office because the common goal is not the benefit of the company but individual benefit with the less amount of stress and personal sacrifice possible (I am generalizing). Hmm, I wonder If I should have read more about this company first. Do I really want to work here at all? I could do other things and fulfill something I have yet to discover. Maybe I wont be good here. Of course I can do the job, but do I have the passion? Money, right, must not forget, Money is the reason I am here. If I make more money I can live better and therefore maybe do something great with my life. Or just live a simple life enjoying ever moment.. Well, I could do that too If I had the extra money, I could enjoy every little moment. I think. Maybe when you have too much money the actual perspective is lot. I wonder…”

This is real. I wish I was making this up. But I am not, this goes through my hear with the speed of light and I can actually continue the interview, I can listen to my potentially new boss and still think this.

And if you read it, truth is I am sabotaging myself. I am thinking back and forth about my worth, about where I think I should be doing and my goals. Great.

This is just an example. I feel out of my body most of the times. My head has become the ever present voice over of my life. Just like a trailer for a movie sometimes.

I am getting comfortable here with my thoughts. And I wish I could transmit them to people in the flesh. Sometimes I would like to tell this to people I know. But I also know that most people don’t care enough. They have their own problems and their own voice over.

So I wonder, a lot.